The Proof of It All
by machinewithoutfeelings
Summary: She could have forgotten, pretended everything that had happened between them was some sick dream, if the proof of its reality was not growing inside of her. [Rating has changed.]
1. Chapter 1

It can't be, but it is.

Rey knows herself, and she knows her body, and she is. She's known for a while, but she hasn't been able to tell anyone yet. How can she even explain it? She dreads the day when it becomes necessary to explain, because anyone putting together the timeline will easily figure it out. She had been captive for exactly 47 days before a rescue mission had been successful. She had only held out until, what? Day 20?

Maybe they would think he forced himself on to her unwillingly. It was a way out, but it made Rey feel squeamish, thinking about lying about something like that. She couldn't.

She dreads the day when _he_ finds out. Because he will find out. It is possible, she thinks, that he already knows. Somehow. And he will want it. She knows that she will have to protect it from him.

At night Rey splays her hands out on her stomach, feeling the slight change. She thinks of the three times they were together and she wishes that she could take it all back. It all feels hazy now, like she was living in an unreal world, where nothing had context or consequences. She thinks of the first time, when he had gotten so close that she backed against her cell wall. When he practically begged her to join him, or else she would be killed.

 _"Kill me then."_

He had lost control, destroying the furnishings of her cell, before he came back so close she could feel his breath on her ear.

 _"You make this so difficult. Please."_

He did not want her dead. Not at all.

She thinks of the second time, when he came to her and she had for some reason found it beyond her power to turn him away. She thinks of the third time, when she came to him, and had spent the night in his bed as if it was something almost normal.

The whole thing feels like some sickening dream. The proof that it was real grows inside her now.

Of all people, Finn says something first. She thinks it is because he is always observing her closely. He has been watching her even more than normal lately, and she knows that he has taken note of every meal she has refused, every time she seems to need to stop and catch her breath more than normal. It is getting close to five months since the last time she saw Kylo Ren, and her clothes are not very forgiving.

"Do you have anything you need to tell me?" he asks one night when her corners her alone. He says it with a smile, but his eyes are so worried. She cannot lie to him. What is the point? She can feel her child move inside of her as she cries on Finn's shoulder and lets herself be held.

"I'm gonna kill him," Finn says, and Rey laughs into his shirt, because she doesn't need anyone to stand up for her, and they both know it, but it feels nice for him to say it anyway. It feels nice to be held and it feels nice not to keep the secret bundled up inside of her chest, pressing on her lungs. She breathes.

"You're going to have to tell them," he says, threading his fingers between hers as they sit next to each other under the stars. "They already suspect, but you need to have a conversation."

"I know," she says, but right now she wants to lay back and feel the night air on her face and his hand in hers. She puts her other hand on her stomach and feels the movement, and for the first time she finds it comforting rather than frightening. _My child is in there,_ she thinks.

* * *

She does tell, the next day. She's very, very frightened to tell Luke, because she does not want to disappoint him, to make him ashamed of her. She's frightened to tell Leia, because she knows how mixed the general's emotions will be towards the situation. It is her grandchild she carries inside of her, the child of her only son- the child of a murderer who killed the man she loved.

In the end, they side-step many of the _hows_ and _whys_ for more practical topics such as _what do we do now?_

"He will come after the child," Leia says. "After it is delivered, we need to take it somewhere safe. We can find someone who will be able to care for it and protect it from anyone who tries to come after it."

"Without me?" Rey asked, putting her hand over her stomach protectively without thinking about it. "You want to take my baby away from me?"

"Just for a ti-"

" _No._ Absolutely not." Rey feels herself almost shaking; she realizes at this moment how much she feels about a topic she had never even considered before just now. No one is taking her child away from her. There is no way she is going to leave any son or daughter of hers on some random planet, counting away the days on a neverending calendar, wondering if she is ever coming back for them. "My child belongs at my side. There is no one better to care for them than me. If you have to send me to hide away, too, so be it."

They don't send her away to hide. In fact, after the initial conversation, they hardly mention the subject at all, despite her rapidly growing belly. Slowly, she is able to do less and less, until one day she is hardly able to even get to her feet to say goodbye to Finn and Poe before they leave on a mission. She makes herself, though, because for one, they say walking is good for bringing on labor, and also, she _never_ lets them leave without saying goodbye. She never knows.

Rey goes for a walk by herself. She tries to ignore the ache in her back and the pain that runs up her legs, and instead tries to concentrate on the light breeze that pushes her hair back, and the feel of grass under her feet. To be able to raise a child somewhere like this, even in the middle of a war, feels like a gift to Rey. She would have never wanted to bring up a baby back on Jakku, never knowing when you would be robbed, or cheated or starved to death. She had no one, and now she has a family of sorts, people who she knows have her back. _You might not have been conceived from love,_ she directs her thought at her child. _But you will be born into it_.

She crosses over a hill. _What were you conceived from?_ Rey still does not know entirely. There had been an undeniable connection between the two of them, but what that connection is she does not understand. Had it just been lust? Is it possible that it is something so simple, so basic, so mammal? She strikes this thought from her head. It is not love either, because nothing she has come to associate with love seems to fit into this. It is something even more pared down, and one word crosses Rey's mind- _need_ \- when she is suddenly doubled over by the sharp pain of a contraction.

She grips her middle and squeezes her eyes shut with the pain. When it finally passes, she thinks that she probably better turn around and head back. Rey stands up straight, and she sees him. She sees him standing right in front of her. At first she thinks it can't be real, because _how can he be here_ , but he takes a step forward and Rey reaches for a weapon that isn't there.

"I'm not here to hurt you," he says.

"You're here to _take me_ ," she spits at him, and this he doesn't deny. _So stupid_ , she thinks as she backs up. Stupid for walking so far, stupid for not going into hiding when she had the chance, stupid for being so giant and pregnant and useless. The smallest voice inside of her whispers along that she is so stupid for the way her heart jumped the tiniest bit when she saw his face. Because it is his face and not his mask that approaches her. His face, and not his mask, that is the last thing she sees before everything goes hazy and she falls into his arms.


	2. Chapter 2

Rey dreams.

Her stomach is flat and she can hear an infant crying in the distance. Panicking, she tries to stand, but she finds herself unable to move. Her breathing is erratic, her heart is pounding, and she thrashes her head around. She feels empty inside, and she screams for someone to let her up. The crying becomes more and more distant until she can't hear it anymore, and only then is she able to rise to her feet. She runs to the doorway, meaning to chase in the direction she last heard her baby crying, but when she steps out, she steps only into blackness.

 _I never even saw her,_ she thinks as she runs through the dark. _I promised I'd protect her, but they got to her before she even left me._

* * *

Rey wakes.

It is not a pleasant awakening; it is one of those sudden, jerking ones where she feels like she is almost falling. The first thing she does when she realizes that she has been asleep is press her hands quickly to her stomach. Still full and round. A tiny foot jabs into her palm as if to say, "I am here!" Rey lets out of sigh of relief, and she opens her eyes.

He is sitting across from her.

"How long have you been just sitting there staring?" She hopes that her voice sounds more confident than she feels. She moves under the blanket, pulling it closer to her. It is not thin like the one that had been in her cell before, and she recognizes that she isn't in a cell at all. She is in his quarters, in his bed. A bed she had slept in once before.

"It took me too long to find you," he says, finally, and she closes her eyes at the sound of his voice. She hears him stand and cross the room, feeling the weight of his body on the edge of the bed. She feels his finger carress down her cheek, and she does her best to stay still and stone-faced. "You did your best to hide yourself from me, didn't you?"

"Obviously not," Rey says, opening her eyes. He is there, and he is touching her. She lets him rest his hand on her cheek, but the second he starts to drift down to her rounded stomach, Rey swats it away. "Do _not_ touch me there."

"That hardly seems fair," he says, but doesn't try again.

"Fair," she repeats. "What do you know abou- you kidnapped me. You stole me from my home when I am due to have this baby any day now." She wishes that he wore the mask. It would have been easier to remain impassive to a hidden face. This one is too familiar to her, and Rey knows that she has to be strong against it. She had let her judgement fail her in the past, but she has someone other than herself to think of now.

"It will be safer for you to deliver here, anyway. We have better medical facilities than your Resistance base, I'm sure."

"I'm not delivering my baby here." She remembers her dream and she feels cold.

"Oh, you will." He seems so assured. Kylo turns his head slightly, then shakes it. "I'm not here to take your child away from you. That is your decision. You should know that it is my ultimate goal that both of you stay." His stoicism seems to melt into something more earnest. Rey hates it. His hand keeps hovering over her own as if he intends to take it, and she shoves it under the blanket. Instead, he settles his hand on his own knee, and he leans in closer. "I can do this," he says, as if he is trying to convince himself as much as he is trying to convince her. Rey can feel his emotions start to stir up like a sand storm- he is desperate, pleading, needy. This is how he was at his weakest moments when they were together, deep inside of her with his face buried in her shoulder.

 _Such a sad boy_ , she remembers thinking.

"You're a monster," she says, looking away from him.

"You don't believe that I'm a monster," he says, as if it is a fact, and it is. She believes he is lost, misguided, sad, pathetic, lonely and desperate. Rey feels him reaching into her mind and she pushes back. He doesn't belong there. He doesn't need to know what she feels, because he will only manipulate it for his own interests. She lets him cling the edges, for just a moment, feeling him in her, before shutting him out completely. It feels like extinguishing a flame.

"I'd like to be alone right now, actually," she says, and to her surprise, he complies. His weight on the bed is suddenly gone, and she can hear his boots on the floor. He stops right at the door, and for a moment she worries that he isn't going to leave after all.

"You will come to see that I only want the best for our child," he says, and then there is the swish of closing door.

* * *

Rey realizes that she was wrong about not being in a cell this time. It is larger, and more comfortable, but the room she stays in is still a cell by all definitions. She is not permitted to leave, and two stormtroopers are posted outside of the door at all times. Meals are brought to her and taken away. A doctor comes and checks on her every few days.

"You're very close," the doctor says as she packs her things up. "If your contractions become regular and close together, or if your water breaks, just inform one of the guards. They will contact me immediately."

Rey nods, and pulls her shirt back down over her stomach.

Kylo Ren has not come back since the first day she arrived, but she can feel him. She can feel him angry, she can feel him raging, and worst of all, she could feel him hoping. He still believes that she can be brought over. His has fantasies of power, not just his own, but hers. Hers and the child inside of her. What they could all become, together. How he can feel something so wrong so deeply mystifies Rey, and she does not want to try to understand. Every venture into his mind feels like a temptation of fate, but there is nothing else to concentrate on within the walls of her prison, and the call is too strong. His thoughts come to her as if they are being breathed in.

Those are not his only fantasies. His other ones are easier for her to understand, and thus harder for her to ignore. They are fantasies infused with memories, and they make her feel hot and flush. Flashes of him sucking the inside of her thighs or her riding on top of him were mixed with things that had never happened. He thinks of pushing her down on the bed gently and unbuttoning her loose-fitting top. It isn't her as he has ever made love to her, but her as she is now. When her top falls to the mattress, her bare body beneath is heavily pregnant. He runs his bare hands over her stomach before settling them on her shoulders and pulling her into a kiss.

She knows that if she can feel him, he can feel her, too.

Then one night, when things are quiet and Rey thinks that she is actually going to be able to fall asleep normally if the random contactions she has been having let up, it arrives. His voice in her head. It is solid and there and real. _"I want to come to you."_ He sounds like a man breaking a long fast. Rey wonders how long he has struggled with the temptation of speaking to her directly. What has made him relent.

 _"No,"_ she answers back without hesitation. Denying him feels automatic.

 _"You want me to."_

Rey does, but she won't let him. Yes, she is tired of being alone. Yes, she desires the comfort of being held. The idea that she can just think one word and she will have the father of her child in bed with her, lavishing her with the human touch that she has yearned for is appealing. Throughout her pregnancy, there had been dreams and daydreams. Of him showing up, not to take her, but to give himself. To beg for forgiveness and surrender himself to the Light. They would be together, and she would pour goodness into his soul.

 _"That will never be me."_

 _"I know."_ They were just stories she had told herself when she was feeling her worst, like the fairytales she used to make up about her family coming back for her on Jakku. They had no place in the real world. She tries to roll to her side, clutching her stomach. The contractions are coming more steadily now, Rey realizes. How long has it been since she had one? Maybe no more than a few minutes.

Tears spring to her eyes. It is the first time she has cried since being brought here. Rey doesn't want to have the baby here. She wants to have it at home. She wants Leia, and Poe, and Finn, and everyone else on the base. She wants to put it in the little cradle they made for her. She wants to take it for long walks on green grass and make promises she can keep.

She knows that her emotions are probably bursting through the connection she has with Kylo, but she is too preoccupied to do anything about it. She wants to get up and inform a guard that she needs help, but the pain of another contraction rolling in keeps her on the bed. _"I think I might be going into labor."_

His emotions go haywire. _"I_ am _coming to you,"_ he says to her, but then pushes her away before she can protest.


	3. Chapter 3

Her hair is dark, and she has a lot of it. Rey can't stop looking at her asleep next to her; she is such a warm, soft little thing and the way her tiny chest goes up and down with each breath makes Rey lose her own.

She closes her eyes, knowing she should get some sleep of her own, but not even a minute goes by before she's checking on her again.

Rey remembers when her daughter was first placed into her arms, three days before. She had first laughed at the squalling little red thing, tears in her eyes, because she had never felt so much relief in her life. She was here, she was healthy, she was in her arms. Rey's first thought was that nothing could be wrong in a universe that could create something like this. The girl was beautiful, and perfect, a being a pure light.

Her next thought was wondering what Leia had felt the first time Ben had been placed in her arms.

She looks like him. Rey can see herself in her daughter, slightly, but there is no denying she looks overwhelmingly like her father. It does something strange and thrumming to Rey's heart. She knows that she has a million hormones flooding through her body post-birth, and she tells herself that is that cause. She closes her eyes and attempts to sleep again. If not thinking about her baby, though, she begins to think about him.

He had come to her, that night, just like he said he would. Rey had thought that he was the last person she wanted to see, until he entered the room. He came to her bedside, all pretenses between them dropped, and immediately placed his hand where she had denied it before. He looked down into her eyes, his expression wild.

"I'm taking you to the med bay."

Rey moved to sit up, letting his hands slide off of her stomach as she did. "It will be awhile," she said, and then she leaned over, hugging her midsection as the contraction came in waves. "I could probably use something for the pain, though." Kylo Ren stood, and she thought that he was getting out of her way, but instead he reached down and scooped her body up into his arms. "I can walk!"

To be true, she didn't really know if she could, but she didn't want him carrying her. She didn't really have it in her to fight it, though, so she instead closed her eyes and leaned into his shoulder so she wouldn't have to see anyone staring at them as he carried her down the halls.

 _They all probably know_ , Rey realized. She doubted a something like this could actually be kept a secret. She kept her face tucked against his clothes, breathing him in, not knowing when she would have the excuse again.

When he stormed through the doors of the medical bay, Rey finally convinced him to let her wriggle out of his hold. "I'm fine," she said, wrenching an arm away from him. She didn't feel like being touched by anyone, let alone him. Taking a few breaths, Rey looked up at him in the bright lights of the med bay. For the first time, she noticed what he was wearing. Simple black pants, a loose-fitting sleep shirt, no mask. Messy hair from lying in bed. She wondered if anyone had actually even recognized who it was carrying the nine-month pregnant Resistance captive through the halls of the ship. He certainly didn't look very menacing in the moment.

Then, suddenly, she was being led down to another room by a medic and Kylo stood still in the spot by the entrance. She was walking further and further away from him, and something inside her wanted to cry out for him to come with her. She didn't care who he was, she just didn't want to be alone for this. Please.

But, of course, Rey didn't cry, and Kylo did not follow her.

She had not seen him since then.

* * *

There is a cry next to her, and Rey's eyes are immediately open. She picks her daughter up and presses her to her chest. " _Shh,_ " she murmurs as she unbuttons her top and guides the baby to her breast. She's a good eater, no trouble at all, though Rey is still getting used to the way it feels, kind of painful and strange and comforting all at the same time.

Rey doesn't know many songs, but she hums a tune she had made up the first night. She wonders if she can recognize it. She closes her eyes as the baby nurses. She tells the little girl everything in her heart. Tells her what they will do when they leave this place. Tells her about all of her family waiting for her- her grandmother Leia, Chewie, her Uncles Poe and Finn, Master Luke, even BB-8. Tells her the places she will take take her, beautiful and distant and far away- _and your mother will fly you there, because you may not know this, but your mother is an excellent pilot._

The door opens, and when Rey looks up with a start, she sees a shape in the doorway.

It is him.

He is masked, but he removes it as soon as the door closes behind him. She can't really see his face in the dark, and inside she reproaches herself for how this disappoints her in the first second. Why would she want to see him anyway? The plan has always been to keep him away. _Come closer,_ a rival thought inside her blooms. _I have something wonderful to show you._

Stop.

"You finally decided to come," is all she says. Rey hopes that it doesn't sound too desperate, or too much like she is thinking of him often. That isn't her intention.

"I was called out," he says, still standing straight in the darkness in front of her bed. "I do have work to do." His voice sounds slightly damaged.

"People to hurt?"

He ignores the comment, and strides over to the side of her bed. There is a small light next to her bed, and he flips it on before sitting down on the mattress uninvited. His face looks impatient, mixed with anxiety, and he stares at the bundle in her arms, head mostly covered by Rey's unbuttoned blouse.

"Can I please see her?"

"She's still eating," Rey says. "Just pull back on my shirt a little." She does not care. It's nothing he has not seen before.

Still, he seems extremely hesitant as he reaches out a black-gloved hand to move the fabric. It brushes against the skin of her collarbone as he does, and then there she is, suckling at her mother's breast. The baby with his dark hair and pale complexion, his nose, his chin. Despite her contempt for him, Rey finds herself interested in his reaction. She needs to know how he feels about this beautiful little thing they somehow managed to make.

He's quiet, and his face impassive. He reaches out a hand to touch the child's head, then pulls back. For some reason, Rey feels almost a pang of disappointment. Then she sees Kylo pulling off his glove. He reaches again, this time with a bare hand, and softly strokes the black hair on the top of his daughter's head. He touches her tiny hand, her tiny foot, then looks back into Rey's eyes.

"What's her name?"

"I named her Ash," Rey says with a fond smile, looking down at the little eyes that blink up at her. Kylo makes a sound next to her, and she looks over to him with narrowed eyes. "What? You don't like it?"

"It is just not what I would have chosen."

"You named yourself Kylo Ren," Rey says, shrugging and looking back down at her baby. "I'm not asking for your advice." Seemingly done with eating, Ash wiggles around in her arms, and Rey lifts her up to pat her back lightly. She feels herself being watched the entire time, and she closes her eyes. He isn't saying anything, but he also isn't leaving. "Did you want something else?"

After a beat, she looks over at him. He looks like he has something on the tip of his tongue, but can't bring himself to say it.

"You want to hold her."

He nods. Rey hesitates for a moment, but she scoots over in the bed and goes to gently place Ash in his arms. "Do you know how to hold a baby?" she asks before she lets herself move her own arms away. He gives her a dirty look, and she sits back, but still carefully watches the placement of his hands as he cradles Ash closer to his body. He looks down at her for a very long time, watching her scrunch her small face at him before her eyes begin to flutter closed. She is perfectly relaxed, completely unaware and uncaring of who it is that holds her, what he has done, the blood on his hands. He is a heartbeat next to her own, someone safe to fall asleep into.

Kylo looks up at Rey, and he smiles. A real smile. It's small, just the lifting of his lips on either side, and it's extremely fleeting. But it is directed straight at her and Rey feels everything get shaky. Her stomach feels knotted. He holds the sleeping baby out to her, looking down again with what Rey swears must be pride. She kisses the sweet-smelling crown of her head, and lays Ash out to sleep next to her in the bed. When she looks back up, Kylo is closer, but not touching her.

"Is there anything you need?" he asks, keeping his voice so quiet. "Clothes, or diapers, or...I don't know. What do babies need?"

"I think we have plenty," Rey says. A silence falls over them, and after minute, Rey realizes that they are both doing the same thing. The thing she often finds herself doing- watching their daughter breathe, almost as if they can't believe that she is a real thing that exists.

She is _their_ daughter, Rey knows. Just as much his as hers. Can he really care for her in the same way, though? It feels wrong to reach out and touch his mind, especially when he already seems so broken down and opened. She glances over to watch his face instead, and their eyes meet.

"Can I stay here tonight?" Kylo asks, breaking their quiet, and it sounds so gentle, and warm, and pleading that Rey is almost tempted to forget who he is and say yes. She wants to, oh, she wants to. "While I was gone I thought about nothing but you. Both of you." It feels so intimate and so easy in the dark, both of them speaking in little more than whispers. She feels his hand on hers, and she lets him keep it. Her heart is beating so fast.

In her mind, Rey sees the two of them in bed, lying on either side of Ash, their eyes meeting over her downy head. She feels his cold feet running up her leg and her kicking them away. She imagines father and daughter both asleep, Ash on his chest. She imagines him picking her up to walk her around the room when she cries. She thinks of holding Ash close to her body and him kissing her, so soft on the lips, before brushing another one on top of the newborn's head.

 _Fairytales_.

"Where were you, before?" Rey asks, pulling her hand back from his. "When you were gone. What is it that you were doing? Exactly."

Any trace of a smile drops from his face. He becomes rigid, and the dream-like fog that had been over the room seems to have lifted. His face has become so blank to her he might as well be wearing the mask.

"Did you kill any of my friends?" Rey asks. "Were they coming for me?"

He had felt at relative peace a few moments before, but now Rey feels his anger begin to build as she attempts to dissipate her own. She reaches through the Force, and through the anger she also feels...betrayal? _He_ feels as if he has been betrayed by her. It disgusts her, and she pulls away. She does not want to know what's in his mind.

"You can't keep us here forever," Rey says as he rises. "I refuse to let you make my world so small that you'll think I'll forget."

Because this can't keep going on. They're in stasis, stuck in an in-between world where she can't do anything. Something has to change, and Rey has a heavy feeling that it will be soon. She feels caught by a memory of something that has not happened yet. It gives her a sick feeling in her gut, and Rey tries to chase down the feeling, identify it, but it slides away like sand through open palms.

"I don't plan to keep you here forever," Kylo Ren says. He pick up his mask and puts it back on, closing himself off to her completely. His voice is changed now, inhuman. "Because I know you will see my way soon. I have no doubt in that. It will be better for us all." His masked head turns down slightly, and Rey can tell where he is looking, but he says nothing more.


	4. Chapter 4

Rey is not going to let herself become weak.

As soon as she is able to, she starts exercising her body and her mind. Sure, meditation is a little more difficult when she can be snapped out of it at any moment by the wailing shriek of an infant, but she just has to adjust.

It feels good to be able to _move_ again, without feeling weighted down by her pregnant stomach.

She thinks about Kylo Ren, and she thinks about the way he looked at their daughter. She thinks about it too often. At first Rey thinks that he is clouding her judgement, disturbing her connection to the Force, leading her the wrong way. The more she meditates on it, though, the more she realizes that part of Kylo Ren that draws her is the part still bound to the light- and that part is growing. She can feel it.

 _If I can feel it,_ she worries. _Who else can?_

He does come, sometimes. It's almost always late at night, when Rey is half-asleep. She wants to ignore him out of principle, but it is impossible, because he is someone to speak to and she thinks that she is starting to go strange in the head from not talking to anyone. She talks out loud to Ash all day, but she is running out of things to say and an infant never answers back. Besides, she wants to encourage that part of him that wants to see her halfway through the night, that vulnerable boy who holds a baby with impossible gentleness.

Kylo doesn't try to stay _with_ her anymore. He does offer to let her sleep, though, and after a while, Rey is tired enough to grow comfortable with the idea of letting him watch Ash while she slumbers. The first few times she wakes up with that same desperate feeling that the baby will be gone, but she's always there. Sometimes Kylo is just looking at her, and sometimes he's holding her and pacing the room.

"What are you your plans?" she asks him one night, the moment he enters the room. "Just keep me here indefinitely? What are you accomplishing by keeping us caged up?"

'She doesn't receive an answer, but Rey feels like there is more to that than maliciously ignoring her. She has come to think that Kylo Ren doesn't _have_ aplan. He is just stalling until he figures something out. She senses he is almost as tired of this situation as she is when he sits beside her and puts his head in his hands, long fingers threaded through black hair. He seems stressed beyond what he has been in the past, a man at his breaking point.

"There is somewhere I can take you," Kylo says. "But I don't think you will like it. I have been putting it off, but I don't think I can do that any longer."

Anywhere is better than here, at least, that is what Rey thought a few minutes before. Now she doubts that, though, doubts it by the gravity in his voice and the evident pain on his face that he tries to hide.

"My Leader wishes me to bring you to him," Kylo says. "I had wanted to wait until you were stronger with the dark side of the Force, but as it seems we are at an impasse. Maybe he can better expediate that. I sometimes feel that I am far too _weak_ to handle you myself. You cause something wrong in me." His eyes are wide when he turns to her and for the millionth time Rey wonders why she had invited someone so incredibly broken into her life. Did it mean she is broken, too?

"What does he want?"

"Besides the obvious, I cannot say. You are strong in the Force and he wants you to join us instead of clinging blindly to the light."

"I would think you should all realize how pointless that is by now," Rey says, squeezing the bridge of her nose between two fingertips. It is tiresome, this constant back and forth struggle that, when pared down, amounts to no more than _yes-no-yes-no-yes-no-yes-no._

"You're the one who doesn't realize what is pointless," Kylo says, lying back on the bed and staring at the ceiling as if it holds all the answers he seeks. Rey knows that she can probably disable him right now, as he lies on her bed all dreamy and almost relaxed. His lightsaber is by the door. He forgets she is his prisoner. She could concievably fight her way out with it, but then again, not with a child in her arms, blasters firing at her from every direction. Instead, she lies down next to him, not touching him, but looking up at the same ceiling, wishing that she also had answers.

* * *

The next day, they land on a planet, which one Rey isn't sure, but she is let out of her room. She is given new clothes, nicer than the simple ones she normally wore, but dark robes not to her taste. She has a sling that she puts the baby in, and she wears it across her chest. Kylo meets her at her door, and walks her out.

"Don't bother trying to run away," Kylo says, keeping a brisk pace in front of her. "You'll find no friends here." He pauses, waiting a moment for her to catch up, and looks down at her. "No unarmed spacecrafts for you to commandeer." Rey knows he is smiling, she hears it in his voice.

It is a small base, and leads out into a small town, looking as if it sprung up just along with the military occupancy. At the end of a street, there is a restaurant. When Rey asks why they are stopping there, he doesn't answer, he just walks through the crowd to the back doors. He is trying to be nice, she realizes. Guilt for where is is taking her after this.

The inside is full of soldiers, but the patio is empty because of the rain, despite being covered. They take a seat out there, the only ones, and it overlooks the edge of a cliff. Below are thick forests, and there's a heavy fog that hovers just above the trees. Rey sticks her hand out from under the awning and lets thick droplets hit her palm. She still loves rain, no matter how many times she sees it.

She wipes her wet hand off on her pants and looks back across the table. Kylo is holding Ash in a sitting position on the edge of the table, and she is staring at him, two chubby hands pushing on the black metal of his mask. It's an absolutely ridiculous picture, and it almost makes Rey want to laugh.

"Take that thing off," she says.

"Not here," Kylo responds. "Not in front of all of...these people. Besides, she doesn't mind it."

Even through his voice modulator, there is a softness to his tone. It feels wrong. It makes Rey feel a strange kind of warmth, which is wrong, too. He is not incorrect, though; the baby doesn't seem to mind the mask that would inspire fear in so many others. She just claps her hands on the sides of it and, out of nowhere, she laughs.

A giant smile spreads across Rey's face. "She's never laughed before." And she reaches across the table and picks up her daughter, bringing her up to her face and peppering kisses all over her nose and cheeks. She does not gift her with another laugh, but she does give a a big, toothless smile. So happy, all of the time. Rey darts a quick glance over the baby's head and she can tell that, even with his covered face, that Kylo is watching them intently.

"When you go before him," he says after a long moment of quiet. "Please, just- say as little as possible. Keep your mind clear. Don't provoke anything."

"You sound like you don't want this," Rey says, situating Ash back into the sling so she could have her hands free to eat. "I thought you wanted me to meet him. I thought you wanted him to persuade me. Which, I probably don't have to say again, isn't going to-"

"I _know_." And it is the first time Rey has ever heard Kylo admit that he does not believe she can be persuaded the dark side. He had so often repeated that she will come around, she'll see his line of thinking- and now he says the opposite, and he sounds angry, like he wants to crush the table beneath his hands. It reminds her of right before their first time, when he had begged her to join him. At the time she had taken _join me or you will be killed_ to be a threat, but now she realizes that it was just a warning. "I just don't want you to go in unprepared."

 _Join me, or you will be killed._

 _Please, this is the only way I know to save you._

It isn't the only way, though. Rey knows there was another way. He just will not choose it.

* * *

He isn't going to go in with her.

Kylo tries to argue with her on the matter, but Rey is insistent. "You're not my keeper," she says as she puts the baby and the sling into his arms. "I don't need someone to hold my hand, I'm fine." It is a lot of bravado, because honestly, Rey is feeling quite terrified. Sometimes, she can pretend her situation is not as bad as it is; that is a skill that was woven deep inside of her over years and years and years. She can deny loneliness, depression, danger- but she cannot deny what she feels as she steps into the darkened room. His presence is overwhelming to her senses. The anger and hate that radiates off of him is like nothing she has ever felt.

 _Clear your mind_.

"We finally meet," Snoke says. "Kylo Ren's little scavenger."

She wants to say is not Kylo Ren's, she is not anyone's little anything. Rey knows better than to start a fight- she's not a hothead. She just wants to get through this and get back to Ash.

"He said you wanted to see me," Rey says. "Here I am."

As he stares at her, Rey feels like one of the salvaged items she would bring to the Niima Outpost on Jakku, turned over and inspected. It makes her feel violated- he is not even reaching into her mind, yet she feels bared. She stands up a little straighter, swallowing the knot in her throat. If only he would speak, maybe they could get this over with.

When he finally does speak, it isn't what Rey expects him to say. _Power_. He says that she has great power over Kylo Ren. What can be further from the truth? Powerless is all Rey has felt for a long time, and it had started to seep through her body, breeding hopelessness that she tried desperately to expel. She knew that if she let that take her over, that would be her end. _If I had any power over him, I wouldn't be here,_ Rey thinks.

"You're wrong," Snoke answers her passing thought, and Rey feels him in her mind, searching, scavenging for something. Rey closes her eyes, imagining herself repelling down the rope in the darkness, feeling for something, anything so that she can eat. She feels so hungry it is like her insides are twisting together, so tired that it feels like her arms are going to give way any moment.

Her mind feels like it's moving very quickly, like someone is flipping through a book. She sees herself the moment she watched Kylo push the lightsaber through Han, the first time she had truly felt the urge to kill another person course through her. For that moment anger had wiped out her vision and she had felt nothing but rage.

She sees Ash's face the first night Rey slept next to her in the medical bay, when she most the most precious and frightening thing Rey had ever seen. She feels the sobs she had pushed down, alone in her bed that night, wondering what she was going to do, what could she do...

And then, her minds turns to another image of Kylo. He holds her without strain as they kiss, needy, and warm, moving against each other. He drops her on the bed and then just surveys her, bruised lips, parted legs. _"I'm going to enjoy this,"_ he says, moving a slow hand up her leg. _"Not like before. I am going to take my time with you tonight."_ He drops to his knees and begins to suckle a spot on her inner thigh. Rey writhes into the feeling, this feeling is everything, this feeling is-

"Stop it!" She clutches her head, trying to push him away, but her surprise, he withdraws willingly. Her mind feels a mess now, and it takes her a moment to stand upright, to look at him again.

"You have much in you," Snoke says. "So much anger and fear. Passion."

"We all do," Rey says, trying to keep her voice even, remembering this is a man who can kill her with a small movement of his hand, and would. It disgusted her to hear him speak about her emotions, as he could really know her by flipping through her mind like a picture book. "That isn't all there is to me."

Rey isn't just the loneliness and fear and anger in a few choice memories. She's also green grass beneath her feet, the freedom of flight, Finn's hand in hers under the stars, raindrops on skin, Ash's laugh. She will not try to deny her emotions, but she also won't divide them, won't choose to embrace just some as if they are opposing sides. She isn't broken, she is human. _You can't have me,_ she thinks. _You never will._

She expects to be killed, or worse, but instead she is dismissed. Rey feels as if she has been in there for hours, but when she finally comes out, she realizes it has actually only been a few minutes. Kylo stands nearby. He has removed his mask, and his face is pale with anxiety. Ash is whimpering in his arms, and he bounces her slightly, but doesn't look down at her. He looks far away.

"He wants to see you," Rey says, touching his shoulder and breaking him from his trance. His head jerks toward her, and it takes him a moment before he really processes what she says.

"Yes. Yes, here." He deposits Ash into her arms, barely looking at Rey. She had thought he would ask her how it had gone, he had been so invested in it before, but perhaps he already knows. Perhaps her just walking out of there was all he was waiting for. He puts his mask back on, straightens his robes. Rey can see him pause right before he goes through the door.

"Don't go anywhere," he says, not even turning around as he speaks. "The other door is locked, anyway, so you can't. It doesn't matter." She sees him breathe, consciously, and Rey hopes that he is better at keeping Snoke out of mind that she was. Not that it is really even necessary. Everything can be read on him by just looking.


	5. Interlude

_She should have killed me the first time we met_.

It would have been better to die in the snow, blood and frost on his face, blowing up with the entire damn planet. Everything had been different after then, Kylo Ren knows. Sometimes he thinks he wasn't meant to live past that day, because everything had been disintegrating after that.

And it wasn't fair. That day was supposed to have been his _victory_ , the severing of ties that made him something far too disgusting and weak and human, but Rey had wrapped her light around his neck and strangled him, slowly. Put something in him that he didn't want. Drew something from him that was so heartbreakingly beautiful that-

Kylo is on fire.

He removes his mask, throwing it to the floor, the moment he is alone in his room. He supports himself on a small table, taking ragged breaths. Just for a moment, then he is throwing the table over, smashing it repeatedly into the wall using the power of the Force, and it begins to splinter and break in half. He has been _poisoned_ , he knows it.

 _And you drank it willingly. You savored it. You're a liar to yourself and everyone around you._

"You're a disappointment," Snoke had said. "You have made every excuse for keeping the girl around when she is nothing but a distraction."

"She has great power-"

"Her _potential_ use is not worth your destruction to me. And you will be destroyed. You cannot hide anything from me, Kylo Ren."

He is being destroyed. If Kylo had thought he was being torn apart before, he now knows the true meaning of the words. He _has_ been torn apart, and his muscles and tendons and bones and organs are all on display, yet his body still physically functions as if everything hasn't been pulled out, tampered with, rearranged. He has an injury and he wants it to _show,_ because he feels as if he is bleeding out.

"I am loyal to the First Order. I am to loyal you, Supreme Leader."

"Above all else?"

"Of course."

He is lying to his Leader, the most pointless activity, yet he does it anyway. He _knows_ that Snoke can see his heart, his mind, his injuries and his poisoned soul. He will not say it, though. This is what he has dedicated his life to. Kylo has made _every choice_ to get to here. There is no going back, there isn't. If he is not Kylo Ren of the Knights of Ren, of the First Order, loyal to the Supreme Leader Snoke, then what is he? He is not Ben Solo. He can _never_ be Ben Solo again, he knows it, no matter how much light tries to lie and deceive him.

"Then prove it to me, Kylo Ren. Do what needs to be done. I don't want to see you again until this weakness has been expunged from you."

He thinks of his father, with a love so strong the man let himself be stabbed through the chest for a chance. Once a baby named Ben had laid against the same chest as if it was the safest place in the galaxy. A baby named Ben had once clasped Han Solo's face and laughed with a gummy little smile. Han Solo had loved his child so thoroughly that he had let it destroy him, as Kylo is now letting himself be destroyed.

It terrifies him. It enrages him. The rage spreads from his chest like a wildfire; he almost can feel the flames licking from his fingertips. _This isn't right._ It is the only thing that is right. _You have to control yourself._ It is beyond control, it always has been. _You have to make the choice._ Choices are a lie.

Kylo Ren picks up his lightsaber. The red glow is the only light in his dark room, angry, flickering and unstable.


	6. Chapter 5

Rey wakes in the middle of the night to the sound of Ash crying, but when she reaches for her, she isn't there.

She sits up in bed, rubs her eyes with flat palms and looks around the room. The outline of Kylo is in the corner, holding the baby, but he is very still. He usually paces and bounces, but she is now screaming at the top of her small lungs and he is doing nothing but holding her flush against his chest.

"Kylo?" Rey mumbles, sleepily. "She might be hungry, give her to me." She sits up in the bed, and the sheets fall to her waist. Her top had been discarded earlier, and she pulls the sheet back up to cover herself for the moment. He doesn't respond, though, he doesn't move. She crawls closer to the edge of the bed, and outstretches an arm while letting out a giant yawn. "C'mere."

Worry and fear start to creep up through Rey's chest the longer Kylo stays quiet, the longer Ash's screams go completely uncomforted. Worry and fear and _anger_ , she is crying, their baby is crying like the world is ending and he does nothing. She stands up and snatches the baby from his arms without a struggle. Rey kisses the top of her head and runs her hands over Ash's arms, legs, her little tummy. "What is wrong with you?" Rey asks, holding Ash close and bouncing her slightly. She stares up at Kylo sharply. "Did you do something to hurt her?"

"I didn't."

These are the words that Kylo barely seems to breath out, and then he turns to her. She notices that he is fully dressed for the middle of the night. His eyes are wide and strange, and Rey unconsciously takes a step back. He looks dangerous. _He is always dangerous_ , Rey tells herself, but she knows that she doesn't believe it. He hardly seemed dangerous when he was pressing his forehead to hers and kissing her neck, and he seems almost gentle when he is pulling Ash into fresh, clean nightclothes.

 _This_ Kylo Ren is darkness. This Kylo Ren grips the lightsaber at his side, and Rey realizes too late how foolish she has been.

"We are going," Kylo finally says, breaking his eye contact with her. His hand releases the lightsaber. He begins to throw open drawers, pulling out the diapers and baby clothes Rey keeps in the top drawer. Rey slumps where she is standing, and she lets out a breath that, for a moment, she believed to be her last.

She tries to recover, and she takes a pause before speaking again. "Going where?"

He doesn't bother to address her question. "Get dressed," he says, and he tosses her some pants and a top over his shoulder. Rey doesn't know whether to trust him, not while her heart is still pounding from a few moments before. The alternative, however, is just going back to sleep and waking up and going back to sleep and waking up and repeating that for the rest of her life. She pulls the shirt on over her head, and replaces the sleep pants she has with the studier, brown ones that Kylo handed her.

Rey puts up her hair with steady hands but a tightness in her chest, unsure of what is about to happen. Yes, she had once thought that anything was being better than being trapped in this room, but that was before she had gone to see Snoke earlier in the day. She hopes that they aren't going back there. She doesn't think that they are, though.

Kylo's energy is different, though, more frantic than she's ever seen.

"I'm going to need you to pretend like you're being taken somewhere against your will," he says as he puts the packed bag under his robe. He has donned his mask again. Taking the arm not balancing a baby on her hip, he tugs her along, a little roughly, out of the door.

"That won't be difficult," Rey says, stumbling as they step out into the hallway. She lowers her voice as they start to walk down the fluorescently lit corridor. There are a few stormtroopers at the end of the way, but they seem to automatically disperse when they see Kylo walking toward them. He turns them around a corner and they keep walking. Rey tries to push into his mind to figure out what is going on, but he senses her almost immediately.

"I feel you there," he says in no more than whisper. "And yes, we're leaving. Now stop messing with my mind so I can think."

 _Leaving_. Is it really possible, just like that? They can just walk through some doors?

It's too easy. No ordinary soldier on night guard wants to confront Kylo Ren, so they glide through the halls unaccosted. As far as they know, he has the authority to be doing whatever he wants. No one can see what is inside of his head. _No one but me_ , Rey thinks. _And Snoke_ , her mind adds, willing that she not purposely discard that fact. The night is cool when they step outside. Rey feels moisture in the air and it tickles her skin. Kylo has let go of her arm by this point, and she walks behind him, weaving through ships as he looks for something specific.

"Can you fly this?" he asks, patting a gloved hand on metal. It's small, it's discreet. It can barely fit the three of them with a baby on the second's lap.

Can she fly it?

Of course she can. Rey already feels lifted and carried far away.

It is only when they are completely out atmosphere, out of site of the planet entirely, when they are just an insignificant drop among the stars Rey stares at with a renewed and awed appreciation, that she appreciates the full weight of what had just happened. She turns to Kylo, who has taken off his mask and is rubbing the sides of his temples, slumped over in the co-pilot seat. He looks completely drained, and somehow paler than he already was.

"You've defected," she says plainly.

His dark eyes meet hers, and his expression doesn't move. "Let's see how far we can get," he says finally, not exactly answering. "At best we have until maybe until mid-morning before they notice we are actually gone- at worst, they already know."

"Where are we going?"

"We probably need to get rid of this ship as soon as possible," Kylo says. "They will be able to track it. Anywhere we go in this, they'll be able to find us." He is sitting in the copilot's seat with an arm tightly wrapped around Ash to hold her in his lap. He looks as if the magnitude of everything he has done tonight is just hitting him now. "After that, I'm not sure."

"Maybe I should contact-"

" _No_ ," Kylo says, and his voice is strong and insistent. Panicked, almost, if Rey is reading it correctly. "That the first place they will look for us, and they will be _hunting_ for us, Rey. Besides, I won't go back there. No matter what I've done tonight, the Resistance is still my enemy. I haven't switched sides. There is no love lost for them with me. It's only you. And her." At this, he smooths a thumb over Ash's dark hair, following the alongside her ear to the nape of her neck.

He keeps speaking, but Rey, drunk on her newfound freedom and the feeling of the controls beneath her hads, can barely concentrate on a sentence at a time. He's right, of course, going back to the Resistance base right now would be dangerous, not just for the three of them, but for everyone. Snoke, the First Order- they would not want to risk Kylo Ren becoming a weapon for the enemy instead. They would strike immediately if they thought he had joined them.

Rey is tired, but sheer adrenaline keeps her focused on her task. As far as she can tell, no one is after them, yet, which is almost strange to her. Even with this small ship, someone should have noticed the unauthorized take off. Worrying about that won't get them any farther, she tells herself, and Rey grips the controls tighter. She glances over at Kylo out of the corner of her eye. The feeling rolling around in her stomach isn't gratitude- she's not grateful for being released from somewhere she should have never been imprisoned. Still, his words drift into her mind and they stay there.

 _It's only you. And her._

* * *

"You must be out of your mind if you think I'm going to buy this off of you."

The junk dealer is a small man, maybe no more than four feet tall, with shriveled pink skin and a shrewd gaze. He runs his hands over the side of the ship, looking very much like he wants to buy it off of them, but he still shakes his head when he stands away from it. He wants it desperately, wants to gut it for expensive parts in prime condition, but it is too dangerous, too First Order, too very stolen.

"I told you," Rey starts to whisper to Kylo, but he puts a hand across her chest and walks closer to the man.

"You do want the ship," he says. "You will buy it from us. For twice the price you would normally offer. It is in such excellent condition."

"I'll buy it from you," the junk dealer says. "For twice the price."

Rey opens her mouth, but closes it again. Ash is awake again, moving against her chest. She gives a hungry little whimper, and Rey pulls her shirt aside slightly so that she can nurse while swaddled against her chest.

"You do realize," Rey says as they start back into the town street. "That, besides what is essentially stealing, you also just signed that man's death warrant?" The idea sits heavy in her stomach, that she was finally escaping the First Order only to leave death in her wake. She didn't like the idea of involving innocent people in their escape like this. It wasn't fair.

"Am I supposed to care about his life?" Kylo sounds angry at having his methods questioned. "I didn't realize the life of a junkyard crook on a backwater planet was worth more to you than the life of our daughter."

"It isn't! But we could have found a way-"

"You didn't stop me," Kylo says, turning to face her as they stopped on a street corner. The words hit Rey like a punch in the gut, because she knows that they are true. She could have done something about Kylo tricking that man, but she hadn't, because deep down she knew that it was their only way out. Kylo shakes his head and reaches into his pocket to pull some of the money they had been given for the ship, counting a large chunk of it out. "Let's just skip to the end of whatever pointless fretting you need to do to assuage your guilt for letting that happen. It is done, I need you to take most of this money and go buy us something to get off of this planet. I'm going to go buy essentials we might need." He grabs one of Rey's hands and places a large stack of bills in her outstretched palm.

Rey looks at the stack of money, then back up at him. "You want me to go off on my own to buy a ship?"

"Yes. I feel like you'll have a better grasp of what is getting the most for our money. You're more of the pilot. I'll be taking Ash with me, though." He sees the indignation on her face, and rolls his eyes. "Not just as insurance, but because I don't think you want to go with a baby into a business negotiation."

Rey can't deny that he is right. Whatever type of seedy place she is going to find someone to sell her a ship on the spot for cash, she probably doesn't need to be bringing a child into it. Still, it twists something inside her when sees Kylo and Ash turn a corner and disappear into the city, after making plans to meet up at the same spot in a few hours. Rey hasn't been away from Ash since the day she was born, not until the day before, at least, and that was only a room away.

She shoves the money in her pocket and continues down the street by herself.


	7. Chapter 6

There's only once place Rey knows to take them.

"He's not here," Rey insists as she lands the craft. There is nothing but quiet on the small island; the waves even seem silent as they gently roll up the shore. She closes her eyes and smells the sea air. It feels like a lifetime ago that she was last here, though it was actually just around a year and half ago. She looks back at Kylo, coming out of the ship with Ash in his arms, and Rey feels dizzy with how different things are.

When they had met back up together in the city, he had changed clothes. Gone were his intimidating but identifying long black robes, and instead he just wore plain brown pants and a white shirt. It wasn't the biggest change, though.

"Your hair," she had murmured, and Rey had been unable to keep herself from reaching up to touch what was left of his black tresses. He had reached up and touched it in the same spot she did, looking almost self-conscious.

Rey has a hard time reconciling the image she sees now, the short-haired man carrying a four month-old, staring out over the sea, with Kylo Ren. She wonders if he will have difficulty reconciling it, also.

"So this is where he hid all those years," Kylo says, bitterness apparent in his voice. "It's dreary."

Not in the mood to address his attitude, Rey ignores the comment and starts forward to where she knows Luke Skywalker's small dwelling to be. She carries a few bags in her arms , and has the rest follow beside her. It is a short walk, but Rey appreciates every step of the stone path, every familiar landmark she passes. When they approach the house, Rey can almost see herself walking into it for the first time, eager and nervous, _Luke Skywalker's_ new young padawan. She misses him. She wishes he was there to greet them. Rey can almost picture the way he would smile when handed Ash for the first time, the daughter of his pupil. His grand-niece.

There is no one to greet them when they go through the door, of course, but it is not entirely unwelcoming. It's a cozy little place, and Rey sets the bags on the table and counter. Kylo follows in behind her, looking around the unfamiliar room suspiciously. Rey takes the bag with her and Ash's clothing in it and takes it to the small room she used to sleep in.

"You can take the other room down the hall," Rey says when she emerges to find Kylo standing right outside the doorway. "Can you put that stuff I left in the kitchen away? I think I'm going to take a walk by myself for a bit." She studies his face for just a moment. He nods, but he seems very locked up, quiet. Stepping a bit closer, Rey puts one hand on his arm, then leans in to kiss Ash on the top of her head. "I'll be back very soon."

Outside, Rey welcomes the wet, salty smell of the air. She bites her bottom lip, then smiles, taking off up the hill.

It _is_ a dreary day, Kylo hadn't lied, but it is wet and green and the ground is soft. It pushes down every time her heels press into it. It feels so good to be here, like coming home, even if her master isn't here. She wants to just walk among the old ruins, press her palms against the stone. Rey can really _feel_ the Force here- she can feel it everywhere, of course, but this place is special. It begins to drizzle, but Rey just relishes the feeling, pushes damp hair from her eyes as she approaches the temple.

She passes through the archway, letting her hand linger on the stone columns as she goes. Rey closes her eyes and with the echo of her feet she almost feels as if she can hear the echoes of all of the Jedi who have stood here before her.

She needs someone to tell her that she's doing the right thing. Rey knows that sometimes the Force can send a spirit through the guide a Jedi through a particular time of worry or trouble- Master Luke had spoken of it before. Rey wishes that she could open her eyes and see the faded figure of one of these ancient Jedi here to help her, but she opens them and she is still just alone in the crumbling remains of the temple.

Part of Rey wants to go immediately back to the Resistance and fight, but the other part of her knows that she has a daughter to take care of now. And there is Kylo. She isn't responsible for him exactly, but he seems so on the cusp of something. Leaving him alone would be irresponsible. She just hates feeling useless to the cause.

 _Maybe you have a different, but equally important, cause right here._ The thought comes to her almost as if someone else is speaking to her, but no one is. Rey knows it is coming from inside herself.

When she exits the temple again, the rain has started to fall harder. A lot harder. Rey knows there is no way that she is going to make it back to the house without getting completely drenched, so she just goes for it. She takes off from the stone steps running, the soft ground now mud beneath her boots. The drops hit her face, and she almost slips on the wet ground while taking a turn too quickly.

By the time Rey gets back, her clothes are soaked through. Kylo is sitting at the table, the food is put away, and Ash is on a blanket on the floor in front of him.

Kylo stares at her. "Did you go swimming?"

"No." Rey pulls off her top layer of clothing and throws it in a sogging pile by the door. "I was just walking and it started raining. Caught up on me faster than I realized. How have you two been?"

"Fine," Kylo says flatly, and he stands up. "Now that you're back, I think I'm going to go sleep."

Rey watches him walk down the hall and close the door. She feels a tinge of worry go through her, and she has to keep herself from following him down the hall. _He needs to work out his feelings on his own,_ she tells herself, and instead, she picks Ash up off the blanket and gives her a big kiss on the cheek. "Why don't we get some sleep, too? It's been a long day, hasn't it?"

So they sleep. They sleep for a long time. When Rey finally wakes, it is night outside. Her stomach is begging her to eat, and she realizes it has probably been over a day since she's had anything at all. She rolls from bed, and checks to see if Ash is still sleeping before exiting the room. She expects the house to be completely dark, but instead, there is a small fire burning in the main room.

Kylo is sitting in a chair before it, staring straight up. Rey crosses the the room and places a hand on the back of the chair. "I thought you were asleep. Did you sleep at all?"

At he voice, Kylo jerks and looks at her, startled. Rey is surprised that he hadn't noticed her at all. He was normally so perceptive, but now he seemed very lost in thought. He turns back to the fire, and shrugs. "A little."

He seems so sullen. Rey wonders if she should just leave him alone again, but something propels her to stay, to take a seat across from him. Her insistent stomach takes a back seat. "What's wrong?" she asks, realizing as the words leave her lips that is the most inane question she could possibly ask of him.

He recognizes this, too, and doesn't fail to let her know it with his tone. "What do you think is wrong? I've just given up on everything I've ever worked for. Give me a few days to mourn, at least."

He seems dismissive, but is speaking again before Rey can even leave the chair. "You have knocked me off my path, you know?"

"Me?" Rey leans foreward just so he can fully see the incredulous expression on her face. "If I recall, I was perfectly content to stay back on D'Qar. You're the one who came and snatched me up, so I think you need to look inward for the person who knocked you off your 'path'."

Kylo shakes his head, looking briefly at her before focusing his gaze straight ahead again. "I was already fully gone by then. I don't think I knew it, at the time. I thought I had control."

Rey contemplates for a moment how to respond. She thinks of the things she would like to hear from her own friends, but she doesn't think they would mean the same thing to Kylo. They would sound hollow. And Kylo isn't her friend. Rey doesn't know what he is.

"Maybe you were meant to be knocked off your path," Rey says, finally deciding just to speak the thoughts in her mind. "Were you happy, the way you were? Do you really think more happiness lay in your future there than you can find here?"

"It's not about being happy."

"Than what _is_ __it about?" He frustrates Rey. She doesn't understand why someone would willingly choose unhappiness, servitude to a monster, over love and acceptance. And for what? Power? "What do you want from your life if you don't care about being happy?" He doesn't respond, and Rey presses further. "What did you get from all the chaos and destruction? Why can't you see that the light is calling you to help you, not destroy you?" Rey knows that she is just ranting now, but she can't seem to stop. He still won't respond to her, and Rey decides to try something else, something that has been on her tongue more than once. "I know there is good in you, Ben."

This snaps his attention to her. He has gone from melancholy to infuriated in almost no time at all, and his eyes seem to run her through. "No," he says. "No, you do not do that. You will not try to touch something in me with that name, because it won't work. He is dead, long dead. Whatever figment from your mind you think you will find in me, you won't."

"I don't believe that."

"Believe what you want. You'll be wrong." They both fall silent at this. Doubt is creeping over Rey. Perhaps it was wrong to say anything at all. Still, she couldn't help what she believed. As cruel and callous as Kylo Ren could be, she knew that Han and Leia's lost son was still in there somwhere.

She hears Kylo let out a derisive laugh, and her head turns. His dark eyes meet hers, fully, and he seems almost amused. Amused, and very, very sad. "You think about Ben Solo as if he's someone you know. You don't. You have never met him."

He had been in her mind. In her mind and somehow Rey hadn't even noticed it, her mental state already so compromised. She wondered how he did it so smoothly, especially when he seemed even in more of a fragile state than she was. "I have heard things about him," Rey says. "Things that let me know that deep down-"

Kylo cuts her off. "There is no deep down. I'm not an innocent person encased in the shell of a demon. You've heard about me from a grieving parent and my soft-hearted uncle." He scoffs under his breath, and shakes his head. "All blinded by familial love. Ask someone else what kind of boy Ben Solo was. Ask your friend Poe Dameron; he knew me." Kylo meets her eyes. He is shaking as if they are outside in the storm, instead of in a snug, warm room. "There was a defect in me long before I became Kylo Ren, Rey. I was skilled at playing good. I wanted desperately to have the kind of inner goodness that comes so naturally to people like you, like my Uncle Luke. It bothered me a lot when I was young, before I came to accept myself for what I am." He closes his eyes, then reaches out in front of him, squeezing his hand together. The metal of the fireplace screen twists along with his fingers; the sound of it shrills in Rey's ears. "Now I don't know who I am."

 _I do._ The words rise in Rey's throat, but don't escape it. Instead, she puts a hand on top of his outreached one and slowly lowers it down to his side. Kylo looks down at their hands together, then back up at her with wet eyes. The sight sends a panic through Rey. He parts his lips, as if about to say something, but then a cry comes from the bedroom. Rey jerks her hand back.

"There's someone who doesn't care who you are," Rey says, rising and going to the kitchen area. She pulls a loaf of bread out of the bag out of the cabinet. As she slices it, she watches Kylo leave his chair and walks back to where Ash is.

She spreads some roseberry jam on her bread then sits it down on the table. Kylo comes back in a couple of minutes later, cradling Ash in his arms.

"Just wanted to be changed," he murmurs, his lips brushing over his daughter's head. "And held, I think." He sits back down in front of the fire. Rey watches them out of the corner of her eye as she gets a glass of water and then sits down at the table. He seems calmed from a few minutes before. He is even humming a bit as the baby starts to quickly go back to sleep in one of her favorite places. Rey starts to eat, and she hears the humming stop. Kylo's voice is low when he speaks to her.

"I was going to kill her. And you."

The words shoot straight to Rey's stomach, making her want to throw up, but she pushes it down, centers herself, takes another bite of bread. She had known it, but hearing it feels far worse. "You didn't," she manages to say. "You faced darkness and you rejected it."

"I had made up my mind to do it," he continues, as if she hadn't spoken at all. "I left my room with the full intention of just- just slaughtering you both in your sleep."

This conversation is among one of the most unpleasant Rey has ever had, but she feels that she needs to let it happen. _Let him purge it_. She puts her bread down on the plate, and comes again to sit across from Kylo. He won't look at her. Instead, he can't stop looking into the fire, watching the small flames dance around the burning wood.

"What stopped you?"

"I don't know. Weakness."

" _No._ That's not it. What stopped you?"

She thinks he isn't going to answer, because Kylo is quiet for a long time after. The only sounds in the room are the crackling of burning wood and the gentle snores of a baby that's fallen asleep against her father's shoulder.

"In my life," Kylo says finally. "There are so few things that actually make me- I don't choose many things. I live a life where I am ultimately submitting to the will of someone else, because my own decisions are often...chaotic. I don't trust myself. Something about you, and her, overwhelm my distrust of my own will." He paused. "Killing my father did not make me feel stronger. _This_ __somehow does. Just looking at her makes me feel overwhelmed. So I just couldn't do it. It's selfish, I suppose. I can't really tell if I didn't want to live in a galaxy where I had done that, or just a galaxy where the both of you no longer existed."

Neither of them really speak after that. The fire burns, the food lay forgotten and all three slowly succumb to sleep as the sun begins to filter through the windows.


	8. Chapter 7

Rey has a wide grin that she lets loose when she is really happy. Her eyes squint together and her brows go up and suddenly her face is half teeth, baring them in a way that would be ferocious if she didn't also radiate delirious joy.

Kylo doesn't come to know this until several weeks of living with her in the house on the island.

He realizes it was because she was never truly happy around him before- passionate, intense, wanting- but not the pure sort of upbeat elation that she is free to experience now. It captivates him, like everything else about her. He keeps a catalog in his head of these moments.

When the rain stops and they get their first truly warm, sunny day. Rey wants to go swimming, but Kylo sits on the shore with the baby. He's nervous when she first descends into the water- she's from a desert planet, she probably can't swim well, he needs to be on alert if she starts to down- but she surfaces a few seconds later, her hair wet against her head, face positively aglow.

When they decide they should use the Force to catch fish. For some unknown reason Kylo rolls up his pants so he can stand in the water to do it, then immediately slips and falls face-first into it. He doesn't mind, because it makes her laugh, but he still stalks off angrily back to the house without saying anything. Just on principle.

When they are poking around their newly acquired ship and discover a holovid that must have been left aboard by the previous owner. More specifically, when they begin to play it and realize just exactly _what kind_ of holovid it is. Rey covers her eyes and all he can see is teeth as she almost chokes on her laughter.

When he is passing her bedroom and he hears Rey howling. She is laying in the bed on her stomach, opposite of Ash. When Rey notices him standing in the doorway she ushers him inside and looks back at the baby. Rey make a low, animalistic growling sound and Ash's eyes go wide, before scrunching up at responding with a fierce little growl of her own. Rey explodes into laughter again, and she looks up right into Kylo's eyes with that smile.

They're not every day, or even every other day, but they are some days and Kylo remembers them.

* * *

"We should train."

Rey puts down the spoon full of mashed fruit and looks up at Kylo. She had been trying to feed Ash solid food for the first time, but it had not been going particularly well, as evidenced by the light purple splotches on both of their faces. Rey wipes her hand across her cheek, rubbing off most of the actual fruit, but leaving a violet stain.

He has laid his lightsaber down on the table.

"Train with that? " Rey thinks of her own lightsaber, left safety in her room back at the base, and wishes she could have the feel of it in her hands again. It would be good to train. She doesn't want to get rusty. It has been so long since she has practiced. "I don't particularly feel like messing around with that crackly thing. I'd kill myself. I don't know how you use it."

"I want you to be comfortable with using it," Kylo says. "In case of emergency. In case you ever need to defend yourself with it. However peaceful it seems right here, we are still fugitives. We can't let ourselves become lazy or complacent." His eyes look passionate, as if he has been giving this a lot of thought. "I can teach you."

In her mind, Rey sees the young knight in black, hair whipping around him, wet from snow, his maddened face lit by the glow of their sabers. _You need a teacher._

With her eyes, Rey sees a young man in tan pants and blue tunic, short hair wet and freshly showered, picking up stray clumps of fruit that have made their way across the floor.

* * *

Kylo stands back with Ash and Rey turns it on, red light striping through the air. It still gives her a start, seeing it, even though she is the one holding it this time. The lightsaber, and the person who held it, had once been her enemy. It could have ended her life. Now he has handed it to her willingly, and watches with anticipation.

"It feels strange." Rey's face is twisted in slight confusion as she gives it a few experimental swipes in the air. "It feels like...like I'm holding a few lightsabers tied together in a bundle. Like they're all shifting around each other." She shakes her head. "Again, how do you _fight_ with this thing?"

"It's cracked, but that doesn't make it anything other than one full piece, still," Kylo explains. "Try not to feel the fracture- fill it in with the Force. See it all for the way it works, together." His eyes are full of passion as he guides Rey through her movements.

She tries to concentrate on the Force, but her mind also keeps going to an image she conjures herself- a boy no older than fifteen, shaky hands full of rage and anger and fear, constructing his lightsaber with his cracked Kyber crysal. _This is mine. This is for me._

It is unstable, but it is powerful. It has been used for striking down lives, with now it can also be used to save them.

* * *

They practice like this most days. Sometimes with the saber, sometimes with practice ones they've carved from sticks, sometimes just hand-to-hand combat. It's nice to have something to do. Rey finds herself looking forward to their sessions first thing in the morning. Kylo seems the most relaxed he ever is when they are out there together, losing himself in the physicality of the actions. It isn't the only time she has seen him like this, and sometimes this distracts Rey, when he's shirtless and sweaty and he gives her a little grin. This is where he gets his best hits in.

Sometimes they'll be stopped in the middle of the spar if the baby needs them, or if one of the frequent rain storms moves in. Rey is just about to land a blow to Kylo's left shoulder when Ash starts to whimper, and both parents drop their positions immediately.

"I think that's enough for today." Rey scoops up Ash and they begin the way back up the path to the house. They walk together in silence, but it's a comfortable quiet, really. They have lots of comfortable quiets, as Kylo isn't often one for meaningless chit chat, but Rey is okay with that. She grew up alone. She does appreciate it, though, when he finally does speak.

"What do you hope for her? When she is older?"

His eyes are on Ash, who has gone sleepy against Rey's shoulder.

"I just want her to be happy, really," Rey says, cheek pressed to the top of the baby's head. "And safe. And kind." There are other things Rey doesn't say, little fears that go unspoken, but she knows that she doesn't have to vocalize them.

"What I mean to ask," Kylo says, straightening up and looking ahead. "Is do you plan to have her trained as a Jedi? I don't doubt that she will demonstrate amazing power when she becomes older. Her family history kind of ensures it."

Something about contemplating Ash's potential power bristles Rey. She's a _baby_ _ **,**_ she's five months old, why should anyone be speculating on her future? She has thought about it, of course, but she always tries to brush it aside. As happy as Rey had been to train with Luke Skywalker, something about her daughter embarking the training necessary to become a Jedi makes her feel kind of sick. Part of it, of course, is due to her unsaid fears of the Ash's dark heritage, but it is also just the inevitability of it all. The things that will be expected of the small girl who is now just so new and innocent.

"If she wants to," Rey says finally. "But I don't want her to feel pressured. It feels so easy, now, just the three of us here, but I don't know what is going to happen once we get back with the others."

Mentioning the others seems to bother Kylo, and he looks down towards his feet. "I'm still not joining the Resistance."

"You don't have to fight," Rey says, as if she has any power to decide the fate of this former terror of the First Order. Rey has actually spent many nights awake in bed picturing what would happen the day they finally go back, both realistic and unrealistic fantasies. She never lingers too long on the unpleasant ones, but the nice ones, those she can hold on to until she slips into unconsciousness, hoping they bleed into her dreams.

Kylo has different ideas, she knows.

"What do you think waits for me back with your friends?" he asks. "With the Resistance? I am their enemy. They have every right to bring me to try me for war crimes. At the least I'll be imprisoned and I'll probably be executed." At this, he puts a light hand on Rey's arm for just a moment, then moves to take the baby from her arms. She gives her up readily, and watches as Kylo holds Ash tight against his chest. He holds her like she is something precious, but, Rey sees for the first time, something he feels he only has borrowed time with. Kylo drops a kiss on his daugher's head, then looks up an meets Rey's eyes. "Don't forget what I've done, Rey."

"I haven't," Rey says. "But I'm sure that the general-"

"My mother doesn't have complete sway over everything," Kylo interrupts. "And even if she does, I doubt I will be a wanted presence there. I do not think that the Resistance fighters want a monster living in their midst."

"Then where are we going to go?"

She is at the door of the house now, but when Rey looks to Kylo, he's no longer beside her. Kylo has stopped a few steps back, and he is looking at her with eyes full of shock.

"You- you mean to stay with me? Even if we aren't forced together by circumstance? Even when you have the option to return to your friends?"

Rey's face fully flushes. She had spoken her words so plainly because she had thought of the circumstance in her head so often it had become commonplace. In none of her fantasies, realistic and unrealistic, did she ever leave Kylo behind. Only now, when she is taking in Kylo's complete befuddlement at her questiont, does she realize that he has possibly not made the same assumptions. That his questions about Ash's future are not just conversation- he assumes he is not going to be there.

"You're her father," she says. "You need to be in her life."

"You haven't always felt that way."

"Kylo," she says, and the name is warm leaving her mouth. "You know things are different now." They never really speak of the way things are different. Rey thinks that he has to know, though.

No matter anything else, he is a good father. Rey had once doubted that he could love Ash they way she did, but now she knows that he does. It feels ridiculous to even wonder. She can't imagine taking Ash away from him.

"Rey."

All of his features look softened when she turns to see him.

His hand is on her cheek, and without even thinking Rey closes her eyes and presses her face further into his palm. His fingers circle around her chin and pull her face up to look at him. His pupils are overblown, he looks maddened, but there is nothing frightening about his madness this time. Nothing and everything. With a shuddery breath, she lets her eyes meet his, and then he lowers his face down. Rey knows that Kylo is much taller than her, but it feels like he is towering over her at this moment and it takes forever for him to reach her. The space between the time she realizes he is going to kiss her and the moment his lips finally touch hers feels like a millenia.

Rey feels his arm curl around her waist and pull her closer to him, Ash against both of their chests. She doesn't remember Kylo ever kissing her so softly before. She sighs into it, a hand come to rest at the base of his neck. She doesn't ever want to open her eyes, doesn't want to face the moment after this kiss. Rey just wants to float in this exact second forever, when her entire universe is wrapped up right here, pressed skin to skin with her.

It does end, though. Kylo's lips leave hers, but he keeps his palm on her cheek, lets it tickle down her neck before coming up again. He looks so earnest, expecting, and Rey doesn't know what to say.

"I-I can't." Rey hears the words leave her mouth before she realizes she has spoken them. Kylo's hand goes stiff against her, and it slides back to down to his side. All of the enthusiasm has drained from his face, and he is left blank.


	9. Chapter 9

_When she comes, it is with her hand pressed against the cold metal wall, her eyes squeezed shut. She feels him still not soon after, feels the bare skin of his chest, surprisingly cool, against her back. It feels nice. It shouldn't feel nice._

 _He doesn't pull out right away- he lays on top of her, face resting against her hair, a single digit reaching under her to trace meaningless patterns on her stomach. Rey wonders if she collapses on the bed, will he collapse with her- his body seems molded to hers, and the delicate touch of his finger seems to radiate with a frightening intensity._

 _His head moves, and Rey feels a kiss against one ear. For the fourth time since the first kiss, the third time since they had removed their clothes, the second time since Kylo Ren had been inside of her, and the first time since she had come desperately hard with him inside of her, she wonders what she is doing. This moment, this moment right before either of them makes a move, seems to have a glow to it._

 _He kisses the back of her neck as he slides out, lets his flat palms ghost down her hips, and then his touch is completely gone. Rey falls to the the mattress of her small bed. She doesn't lift her head._

 _She hears the swish of fabric as he dresses, hears the heavy boots, hears him put back on the helmet. All through this she doesn't move, just holds tightly onto her blanket and thinks about what she has just down. Guilt absolutely crushes her, because she knows that she has done something terrible and it is the best she has felt in a long time._

 _A voice comes from behind her. Distorted, not the quiet, incredibly human voice that had been pleading into her ear a few minutes before. Rey doesn't know how he ever expects her to see this form of Kylo Ren the same as she did before, now that she has heard him begging her not to stop touching him in that desperate way. She supposes that his formality now should feel like a splash of cold water in her face, but instead it just makes her pity him. It's like a child in disguise, putting on a false voice. How sad he is._

 _"I will return tomorrow. Perhaps you will reconsider."_

 _He leaves._

* * *

He leaves.

He leaves without a word, but Rey can feel him stalking around the island, destroying innocent bits of nature with his saber in fits of rage. She blocks him out, tries to concentrate on the things she needs to do. She feeds Ash, then runs a bath, often the thing she has to do after meals now that Ash is on some real food. The water never runs hot enough long enough, so she only fills the tub up halfway. It will do.

There's a layer of dirt and sweat on her body, and sinking down into the water feels great, even if she cannot fully relax. Ash squirms where she holds her up in the water, tries to turn away from the washcloth that scrubs away the remnants of dinner from her face. Rey holds her tight, though, scoops up water in a little cup and pours it over the child's head carefully.

She had let him kiss her. She had let him kiss her today, and she had let him kiss her every time. The conflict of heart was clear-cut before, but now Rey struggles to pin down her reason for still resisting. She wants him, he wants her, but giving herself to him now would be crossing a line they can not so easily come back from.

Rey sits there after they are both clean, until the water becomes lukewarm. She is reaching for a towel when she hears the door open in the main room. She dries both of them off, wraps one towel around her body and the other around her head, then exits the fresher.

Kylo stands by the door. He looks dirty, like he's being lying down on the wet ground, and his lightsaber is nowhere to be seen. Rey stands, too, straightening her back. She is not going to be the first one to speak. He obviously has something on his mind- his mind, brimming over with so many strong thoughts that Rey cannot block them out or separate them or decipher them- but he just looks at her.

"What are you doing here?"

This question, along with the strained look on his face, is not what she expects from him after his afternoon of careless destruction. He looks ready to burst, like something is bubbling right beneath the surface, and Rey thinks she might almost be more comfortable with the rage. This calm before the storm demeanor is unsettling. "What?"

"What are you _doing_ here?" He lays out every word very clearly, as if she were hard of hearing instead of just baffled by his question.

"I was taking a bath."

"Don't-" His hands go to grab at his hair in frustration, but it isn't there anymore, and he instead just ends up balling his hands into tight fists and lets them sit on top of his shoudlers. "You know I don't mean it like that. What are you doing here? With me? Why aren't you back on D'Qar with my mother and Luke Skywalker and your friends, all those people who will be able to treat you so much better than I'm capable of?"

She knows he has been out brooding, and all of his brooding usually comes back to self-loathing. Rey doesn't know if she has it in her tonight to gently coax him back to a less agitated state of mind. She doesn't know why it is her responsibility. "I told you earlier, Kylo. Because you're Ash's father. You need to be in her life."

"Why are you lying to me? Stop lying." His voice is frantic, and she can tell that he would be shouting if it not for the baby in her arms. It is actually edging on shouting anyway. Rey feels her defenses going up.

"I don't recall lying to you about anything," she says, her voice slightly rising. "I really, _really_ do not appreciate being called a liar. What I said is true."

"Of course," he says, and his tone would be bitter if it had anything grounding it. Instead it just sounds flippant, unstable. "That is it. I have been a massive fool, but since I have already broken that ground, I might as well dig my hole even further. I have spent the last couple of hours thinking about what I have done. I have jeoparidized my entire future, and I don't even regret it. I should be in mourning, but instead, I wake up every morning excited for my day. Hoping to hear Ash cry so I can have a reason to come to her and pick her up and be with her. A reason to enter your room and see you looking warm and flush with waking...Rey-" He breaks off. His voice had been getting progressively higher and higher, and Kylo takes a moment to rest against the table, breath, get himself back together. Finally, he looks up at her with shiny, honest eyes, attempting to be cold but failing miserably. "I could have put you on a ship, let you two escape by yourself, stayed with the Order. I didn't because I couldn't stand the thought of being away from you. I actually didn't even think about the fact that I could have stayed until we were _here_. Do you know why that is? Not just because you're the mother of my child. Not even just because of my child. I came because I'm in love with you."

There are the words. They lay between them like a blaster on a table.

"You took me," Rey says, after a long period of silence. "You stole me from somewhere I was happy at a time when I was most vulnerable."

"So you hate me for it?" Kylo asks. "That's understandable. Is it insurmountable?" He pauses. "If so, I don't think I can stay here, but I also don't think I can leave. I don't know what I will do."

"No, I don't hate you for it! Listen to you, you're so selfish!" Rey raises her voice, and now she is yelling. She tries to reign herself in, bite down on her tongue, take calming breaths. "I don't hate you for it," she says, steadier. "And that is the problem. I should hate you for everything you've done, but instead I love you for the things you've done, the good things that can't even begin to outweigh the bad things, but something I can't get my mind to stick to reason."

"So you do care for me?"

His voice is lighter now, and he actually sounds surprised. Rey finds his face searching her, and _he doesn't know_. Rey feels like she has been embarrassingly obvious with her weakness for him. Kylo had not known, until twenty seconds ago, how she really felt about him. How she dreams about his touch, how many nights she has envisioned crossing to the room just beyond her own wall and joining his bed, sleeping against his hot chest like she had that one night. How she watches him with their daughter and feels like some invisible crank in her chest is being turned to make her heart beat double time.

"I...do," she admits. "But I'm also frightened of you. I've seen what you can do. I've seen your mind and I know your heart. I know a darkness that lives in you like I cannot even begin to imagine carrying around. I want to be able to trust you, and I want to be able to trust myself." She holds Ash a little tighter. "I can't shake this notion that you might hurt us someday."

"I'm never going to be as good as you," Kylo says, and he places his hand on her chest, over her heart. A shiver runs through her at this touch, the tips of his fingers grazing her damp skin above the towel. "There is so much dark in me, but that doesn't mean I have to use it to hurt. I can try for you. I've never wanted to try for anyone but myself before, but trying for you, and trying for her? I could. I regret every instance I've ever hurt you. I'd rather be dead than hurt you again. I would want you to kill me."

"I'm not good," Rey whispers.

"I told you to stop lying," Kylo says, and her pulls her close, tucks her head against his shoulder and rests his chin on top of her hair. "You are good, and you make me better." His lips in her hair, his large arms around her. "I have been unrelentingly selfish. I'm afraid it is part of my nature. I need you with me, to call me out on it when I am. I want to try to unlearn it."

He pulls back, taking the wet, naked baby from her arms as he does. Rey feels the absence of him immediately, like a shock of cold air. "Why don't you go get dressed?" he suggests in a soft voice. "I'll put her to bed, you just go and when I'm done, I'll come in there and we'll talk."

* * *

Get dressed and we'll talk.

Rey pulls on a soft, gray tunic, and doesn't bother with anything else. She gives the towel around her head one hard scrub and then unravels it, letting her loose, damp hair fall to her shoulders. She sits on the edge of the bed and brushes out her hair until it is straight and lying against her back, leaving little patches of wet on her top. She sits and she waits; she closes her eyes and leans against the headboard.

Some time passes. Rey hears the door close and he is there, leaning against it, staring at her. His gaze wraps around her like a warm blanket. Rey has never felt like this, and it takes her a moment to place the feeling- it's certainty. She's never felt certain of where she stood with Kylo, but now- it's so comfortable, so easy when he comes to her side, tucks the wet hair behind her ear and he _smiles_. Rey never thought she would see the day, and it makes her smile back.

"She's asleep, then?"

"She's asleep," Kylo says. His hand hasn't left her hair, and he moves down to cup her cheek. She closes her eyes, opens to up to this feeling. _Relax. Accept it._ His palm against her skin is one of the best things Rey thinks she has ever felt.

He leans down to kiss her, crawling up on bed on either side of her. She is almost accepting of this, until she has a thought and puts a hand against Kylo's chest to pause the moment.

"Wait! Wait, stop."

Kylo freezes at her her outburst, searches her face for second thoughts. Rey just bites her lip and smiles, though.

"It's your clothes. They're filthy. You should take them off before you get into bed."

Her words are loaded down with implications. They both know it. The grin that spreads across Kylo face tells all, and he doesn't break eye contact with her except for the brief moment that his shirt passes over his face on its way to the floor. Rey looks the other way, feeling her face get hot, wondering why she is reacting this way. It is not like this is the first time they have done this. They have _baby_ together, sleeping in the next room.

She knows the moment his hands slide beneath her shirt, reverently touching her skin, that this is different from any of the other times, though. The first three times might have been fueled by lust, by attraction, by a connection they could not put a name to- but when Rey looks up at Kylo as he slowly undresses her, she can find a name for this. He said it in the other room, and she wants to hear him say it again.

His lips are warm against hers, and this time she accepts them with no hesitation. It feels amazing, and after a few seconds she has to pull away, breathe, rest her forehead against his. She feels his apprehension at her withdrawal, so she takes his hand and squeezes it in reassurance.

"I want this," she says, and she claims his lips again. Yes, she wants this. They kiss heavy kisses, full of want, as Kylo slowly pushes her back on the bed. He has peeled her tunic off of her, and he throws it over his shoulder without care, unable to unglue his eyes from the sight before him. He lets his hands drift up her sides as if cradling something precious.

"Look at you," he says, taking a finger and tracing the stretchmarks that race across her lower stomach. Rey finds that she is not shy about it; she feels no reason to be. Kylo drops his face and kisses her there, then looks up, smiling. He kisses her on the other side, and then he lowers his kisses until he reaches the spot that causes Rey to choke on her contented sighs. Oh, nothing has felt this good in ages. Nothing like Kylo's hot mouth against her. She peeks down and sees just short black hair, face hidden, busy working enthusiastically between her legs.

He slips two fingers into her, and the small, pleased gasp she gives when he curls them up inside of her makes him lift his head, the cockiest little grin on his face. With a laugh, she pushes his face back down, and he gladly obliges. When she comes, it is like waves of electric happiness spreading from the bottom out. She clenches tight around Kylo's fingers, watches with pleasure as he sticks them in his mouth and sucks them clean after removing them from inside of her.

"Was that good?" he asks, joining her on the pillow her head rests against. As cocky as his attitude can be, Rey still senses a real need for approval, and she gives it. She kisses his forehead, his cheeks, the tip of his noise.

"It was." Her voice is breathy and aroused; Rey barely recognizes it. "It's not all I want, though." She brushes a hand against him, a couple fingers grazing his cock, hard and erect aganst his stomach, and Kylo almost whines, eyes closed, sinking into the contact.

His eyes open again, and find Rey's. "Are you sure?"

She nods, and he climbs over her again. He reaches up for her hands, spreads her palms out flat, laces his fingers with hers. Kylo tilts his head, looking down at her. "You're beautiful." His words are shaky. He looks as if he has more to say, but cannot get it out. He settles for running a hand through her still-wet hair, clutching it in his hand and then letting it go, letting his hand rejoin hers. Kylo kisses her forehead. Kylo kisses the bridge of her nose.

"Don't get me pregnant again," Rey says. "I will kill you."

"I won't, I won't," he says hurriedly, words barely coprehensible as he can't keep from kissing her over and over. Rey takes one hand away from him, still letting him pin her down with the other one, and wraps her fingers around his cock. Kylo buries his face in her hair at this contact, lays hot kisses on her neck. "I want to be inside of you so badly," he whispers. "I love you. I'd die for you. I never want to be anywhere without you."

She is scared of his words. No one has ever said anything to her like this. He says those words, _I love you,_ and they throb somewhere deep within her. They echo something she can feel overtaking her own heart, crystalizing inside her chest until she can hardly breathe from how much she feels it. _He never wants to be anywhere without me. He's never going to leave me_. Rey believes him.

She moves to position him to go inside of her, but hesitates. Another fear tingles at the back of her neck, not even a fear really, just apprehension. "We haven't done this since I had her."

"I'll be so gentle," he murmurs, and he is nuzzling her shoulder, unable to stay still, practically vibrating out of his skin at the want to be joined with her. "I'll be so gentle and we can stop whenever you need. I know you're going to feel amazing, I just-" He dots her neck and shoulders with little kisses, lowers his head to take one pink nipple into his mouth, while gently massaging her other breast. Rey lets out a low moan, and she arches up, trying to grind some part of herself against him.

He runs the tip of his tongue in a circle around the nipple, then sucks hard. The familiar but completely different sensation makes Rey jump, and sends an embarrassingly thought through her mind along with the more pleasurable sensation. "Be careful. Be careful, I don't want you to- I'm still..."

Kylo lets his mouth trail down to the cavity between her breasts. He leaves little kisses like she is something to cherish and dote on, then glances up at her with those dark eyes. "Do you want to be on top?" he asks. "Maybe it would be easier."

Rey nods, and Kylo rolls off of her and onto his back, taking her place as she crawls over him. Rey straddles him, and she can feel her wetness against the taut skin of his stomach. She runs two hands up his chest admiringly. She had only had him completely naked one other time, the last time, and in this moment she can't imagine ever wanting him any other way. Rey loves being able to see _all_ of him, loves the ability to stroke her fingertips over any part of his body, watch the way her touch undoes him.

" _Rey,_ " he growls, and he is thrashing his head around in such an impatient way. It is blissful, how much he wants her. With great care, Rey begins to lower herself onto him at her own pace. It is slightly painful, at first, just because of how long it has been since having him inside of her. When they are finally together completely, though, it feels like something powerful. They are both still, staring into the other's eyes. Then suddenly, they are laughing, joyful laughter, and their lips and teeth clash together in ungraceful union as Kylo begins to thrust up into her. He grips his hands on her hips as if she is something weightless he must anchor to the ground, or risk losing.

When she comes, it is with Kylo's hand entwined with her hair, his lips a hot breath away from hers, her eyes wide open to take in everything about this moment- the lustful way he bites at his lip, his flushed face, the searing tenderness in his eyes.


	10. Chapter 10

Kylo cannot sleep in a straight line. His entire body is too long, and if he lays out his feet hang off the bed. Instead, he winds up curving into an obnoxious c-shape, putting his feet where Rey believes her feet deserve to go. He shifts this way during the night, and Rey can stand it in her sleep, but once she is awake, she finds it impossible to get comfortable again.

So when Rey wakes up and finds no giant foot jabbing her in the calf, she sits up in bed, a little disturbed.

The room is still dark, with no sunlight yet filtering in through the window. The only body in the bed is was the infant sleeping happily on her back. After making sure Ash was fine, Rey slides her feet off the side of the bed. The bedroom is empty, both the one they sleep in now and the one Kylo used to take. She surveys the living area, not really worried, but just uneasy.

He's outside.

She leans against the doorway, looking on down with him with sleepy confusion. "I thought you left."

"No, you didn't." He looks up from where he is sitting on the ground and gives Rey a small, crooked smile. He spreads his legs open, dragging a line through the dirt with his heels. "Come here," he says, and he puts up a hand. Rey takes it. She's not wearing pants, just a long shirt, so she is careful when she sits down on the ground. The grass is dewy against her skin. Two long arms envelope her body, and Kylo leans his chin on her shoulder.

"It's still night time," Rey whispers, even though they are outside on an island of just three people. It seems like the time for whispers. "Why are we outside instead of in bed, sleeping?"

He answers only with kisses placed on the back of her ear. Rey shudders, letting her shoulders and head drop forward. The path of his lips continues down her neck and across the small amount of skin exposed her her upper back. He's the only source of heat in the night's chill.

"I want you forever," he mutters into her skin.

"You have me," Rey says. His fingertips stroke down the length of her arm, featherlight, and she sighs into his touch, closing her eyes and leaning back against him. His fingers threaded through hers briefly, before moving back up her arm and then down again. His hands cover hers completely, and they move down the point of her leg where her nightshirt ends. Gently, he pushes it just a bit farther up her hips, and lets his hand go to stroke her between her legs.

Rey keens back against him, but Kylo retracts one hand and puts it firmly on her shoulder to keep her in place. With the other, he carefully slides two fingers across her entrance, then pushes them up inside of her.

"I do have you," he says, beginning to move teasingly slow inside of her. Rey smiles as she tries to lean back against him more, but Kylo's arm keeps her upright. "I have you right here in my arms." He nipped the back of her neck with his teeth, and she breathed out pleased little noises. "I don't even know why. You're beautiful, you look so beautiful when I make you come, when you make yourself come. I don't even know why you let me touch you. I don't deserve it, I don't even deserve to be here with you, I-"

"No," Rey says, and she pulls his fingers from her without warning, turns to face him with folded legs so that her knees poke into his sides. She runs her hands up through his shaggy hair, grasps him by his cheeks. "We're not going to do it like that." He is breathing heavy, and Rey wonders what he has been thinking about, sitting out here alone in the door. She places a light hand on his chest and pushes him back into the wet grass.

"I'm here with you because I love you, Kylo," she says, brushes her hand across the outline of his erection before she pulls it out of his pants. He closes his eyes at the feeling of himself in her hands. "Can't you just accept that?"

"No." He reaches up to pull her down into a kiss, and she accepts, messy with lips and teeth. She grinds down into him, likely staining his light pants green with grass. "I'll never start believing I deserve you," he says in the brief moments their lips aren't in contact. "I'll never lose the fear that you are going to leave me."

Rey doesn't know what to say to that, she never knows what to say to him when he gets like this, so instead she shows him. She grasps his cock and lowers herself down on it, moving up and down once as the feeling of fullness takes her over. She rides him there on the ground, letting him grasp her hips with desperate hands, probably leaving bruises Rey knows she will feel tomorrow. _I want to always be with you like this_ , she thinks. _I want to always be connected to you. Why can't you believe me?_

He had been often impossible to convince. Some days he seemed extraordinary happy, joyful, fun, even silly. Some days Kylo was kisses on the forehead, cuddling until they had to get out of bed, exaggerated voices when telling a story to Ash. Other days the cuddling turned to almost fearful clutching, days when she might find him anywhere on the island, staring off, lost so far inside herself Rey didn't know how to find him.

"It would be easier if you didn't love me," he mumbles into her hair, after they are both spent. He scoops her up in his arms, and Rey nuzzles into his shoulder as he walks her back inside.

"Just come back to bed with us," she says, voice heavy with exhaustation. "Everything will be okay." She kisses the neck she has her arms loosely wrapped around. Neither of them bother to change out of their soiled clothes. He places her gently down onto the bed beside Ash, then lies down beside her in a spooning position. He holds her in that fearful way, but is gentle on the spots of her hips that already feel tender, the places that need to go untouched. He kisses the back of her neck again, and they both fall into sleep.

* * *

When she next wakes, the baby is up and needs to be changed.

The spare diapers Rey usually keeps in the side drawer are not there, and she remembers the large pile of laundry from the day before that sits in the living room, yet to be folded and put away. She groans, forcing herself from the warm bed her family still lies in, stretching out into a yawn as she crosses the room. She'll change the baby, and she'll fold the laundry, but Rey decides that she will not make breakfast. Kylo can do it. He's the better cook of the two of them, anyway. She still doesn't always get the deal with spices and flavors, the idea of food being more of an experience than a necessity to one's body alive.

Rey enters the living area, and is not alone. Luke Skywalker stands next to the chair piled up with unfolded clean clothes.

"Rey," he breathes, and before she knows it, Rey is taken up into a hug. It is warm and familiar and feels herself lost in it before she even puts together that Luke is really here. It is so good to see him that for a second or two after he pulls back, she is just dazed, not even wondering _Why is he here?_

"I saw you here," he says. "I had dreams and I knew that you were here and that you were safe. I knew, but it feels even better to trust my own eyes." He smiles at her, and it is soft and kind and it makes her return one of the same to him.

"I hope it's okay that we came here," Rey finally stutters out, when she is able to say anything. "There was nowhere else I can think of." She also remembers her attire, and desperately tries to pull the shirt she wears down just to cover a little more of her thighs.

"Of course it's okay," Luke says. "I am just glad to see you here alive. Everyone was so worried. You've been gone so long, we thought- but look at you." He looks as if he is holding back something. Rey can only assume. If Luke knew that she was here, he probably knows that Kylo is, too. She has rehearsed this conversation many times in her head before, but now none of the words seem sufficient. All the fears she had before, when she first released that she was pregnant with Kylo Ren's child, seem multiplied ten-fold. She has not just slept with him, she has fallen in love with him, and how will that change how people see her?

She feels shame at feeling ashamed, like it is a betrayal.

"He is here, too, Master Luke," she says quietly, and his expression looks pained, but as if he is trying to shield her from the brunt of it. "He is not who he was, before."

"I fear that love may cloud you from the truth," Luke says. "But I also know the power of love can change a person, and rarely is one past the point of no return. I think we all just fear getting our hopes up too much. My sister especially cannot take another crushing blow."

Rey wants to speak more, explain everything that has happened, somehow lay the contents of her heart out on a table so that they can be seen, can be acknowledged as real and true, but she doesn't get the chance. The door down the hall opens.

Kylo pads out of the bedroom, barefoot, shirtless, with bedhead and a baby attached to his side. It is perhaps the least intimidating he has ever looked, and it is the first look that Luke Skywalker has had of him since he was fifteen and destroyed everything.

Immediately, she can feel Kylo's emotions almost as if they were her own. The anger, the fear, the confusion, the hopelessness come barreling at her so fast Rey almost feels like she has been shot in the chest. She is afraid, and the dark rises in both of them like waves that she desperately tries to calm. _It's okay, it's okay, everything will be okay._

"I need to talk to my nephew," Luke says. "Privately." He turns to look at at Rey, and his grim expression briefly allows for a smile. "I think there are some people parked down on the beach who would like to see you. Finn especially was very eager to come along."

A light glows in Rey at the sound of her friend's name. She glances over to Kylo, trying to process if he is all right with being left alone with Luke, and he nods. She grabs a new shirt and a pair of pants from the pile of laundry, then Rey throws her arms around Kylo, breathes in the scent of his him. She doesn't care if Luke sees. She has committed her full heart; she is not hiding anything.

"I'll be fine," he whispers into her ear, but she can feel the trepidation in his voice. Rey lets go of him with reluctance, takes one last look at Luke, and goes outside.

She wants so badly to listen in on their conversation, but she knows that would be wrong. Quickly, she tugs on the clothes that she grabbed and starts off.

Her heart picks up as she walks along the path down to the beach, however. She is going to see Finn, and Poe! It has been over six months, and the sight of Finn, crouched on his knees, singing stupid songs straight at her belly feels like such a faded memory. He had been around for so much of her pregnancy and the thought that he has never even seen Ash stuns Rey momentarily. She picks up her pace, running down to where the ship is parked. The hatch is down, and Finn is standing at the edge of it, anxiously looking around and tapping his foot.

The moment he sees her his eyes go wide, and his face breaks into one of the biggest, best smiles Rey has ever seen. The launch themselves at each other, Rey stumbles in the sand and they smack into each others bodies in a definitely painful way. Still, Rey laughs and pushes her face into Finn's shoulder while he squeezes the life out of her.

He pulls her back, looks up and down her now-slight frame. "Look at you," he says. "Last time I saw you..." His smile fades a bit, and he looks right in her eyes. She can see the depth of sadness in them, the apprehension, the worry that must have been building all of these months. "Rey. The baby. Where is the baby?"

Rey shakes her head, smiling, stroking the side of his head in comfort, letting her hand go to rest on his neck. "She's fine. She's fine, she's beautiful, she's up at the house with Luke and Kylo."

He stiffens. " _Kylo Ren is here?_ "

So Luke hadn't told him. There is panic on Finn's face. Panic mixed with...rage. In fact, the longer Rey looks at his face, the more it seems to transform to pure anger. She puts a light hand on his forearm. How does she even begin to explain this? When she last saw Finn, her feelings toward Kylo were significantly different. She can't expect him to understand all the changes that had taken place. Rey barely does herself.

"There's nothing to be afraid of," Rey says. "He- he and I came here together."

"Nothing to be afraid of," Finn repeated. "We were told he _killed you._ And the baby. The information we were told-"

"Was a lie. He didn't kill us. He put us on a ship and fled the First Order with us." She knows his reaction is legitimate, yet Rey feels the need to defend Kylo. Perhaps it isn't fair, Finn more than probably anyone else knows _Kylo Ren_ , as opposed to Ben Solo, and she understands having a hard time associating that man with anything not to be afraid of. Her heart feels overwhelmed at wanting to explain what it knows, and not having the language for it.

 _I fear that love may cloud you from the truth._

"We had a funeral," Finn says, quietly, and he's not looking at her. He's looking somewhere far off in the sky. "For the two of you."

"I'm sorry," Rey says, and something inside of her withers and crumbles at the mental image of Finn and the others gathering to send off her spirit with no body. "But I've been here. We've been together. He did the right thing, Finn."

He looks aghast, he looks betrayed, and for a few awful seconds Rey is frightened beyond belief that she has lost her best friend. Then he takes her and squeezes even tighter than before, so tight Rey feels like her bones might crack, but she lets it happen because she needs it. It is all of the hugs she has missed, and she revels in the feel and smell of him. He feels like family.


	11. Chapter 11

Luke sits at the table, and looks at the other chair as if he expects Kylo to take a place there, but he doesn't. Instead he turns to the pile of clothes and draws out a few things, then sets Ash down to begin changing and dressing her. The whole time he can feel his uncle's eyes on him, watching him. It brews something bitter in Kylo. _Yes, Uncle, I can touch something with turning it into disaster. I can be gentle, when someone deserves gentleness. Is it so hard to believe that someone like her can come from me?_

His heart conflicts with his own thoughts, however, because Kylo often finds it hard to believe that a thing like Ash could come from someone like him.

"A father's love for his child can be a very powerful thing."

And that was how he chooses to start out. Luke Skywalker had always had the knack for coming up with the exact wrong thing to say to Kylo, to Ben. He refuses to look up at him, instead choosing to concentrate on pulling small pants on the wriggling child. He does not want to talk about Han Solo with Luke Skywalker. He does not want to to talk about Han Solo to anyone.

"Yes, and how would you know?" Luke Skywalker has no children. _He had many children, even if he did not share their blood, which you spilled._ The thought takes him back to his dream from the night before, the dream that had kept Kylo awake and restless until Rey had finally come to fetch him. He quickly tries to push it from his mind, the images too disturbing even in the light of day.

"I once loved you almost like a son."

"I was never your son. I was your nephew, and your padawan, and your eternal disappointment, I have a hard time believing you would have ever chosen to love me at all if not for the first fact."

"Kylo Ren," Luke says, and Kylo is at least appreciative that he has chosen to call him this. That he won't have to hear him breathe out _Ben_ in that same exasperated, tension-filled tone that he can still play back when he dips into his memory. "I loved you and it was not a choice at all, any more than you choose to love her." He pauses. "It was my father's love that finally drew him back from the Dark Side."

"Is this all you wanted to speak to me about? To prosthelytize?" Kylo asks as he keeps himself otherwise occupied, scooping Ash up from the floor and holding her against his side as he opens the conservator. She's wide-eyed and curious at the visitor; she makes happy sounds and kicks her legs around. Kylo can see Luke Skywalker smile out of the corner of his eye.

"She looks like you."

"So it's going to be small talk about my child?" Kylo takes a scoop of rice cereal out of the tin that he had just yesterday been worrying was running dangerously low. Now that they have been found, he reasons that it doesn't matter anymore. "Yes, she looks like me, sorry to disappoint anyone who might still have lingering hopes about her paternity."

"She looks exactly like you did when you were that small. What is her name?"

Kylo sets down the bowl he is holding a little roughly, looks to meet Luke's eyes finally. "Can we dispense with the sentimental babblings? What do you want from me now? Do you want me to confess to you that I regret what I've done?" He turns back to his task, mixing Ash's cereal with warm water. "What does regret change? Regret is a meaningless emotion. There is no changing anything."

Memories of his dream hit him again, unbidden.

 _The disturbingly sunny day, the small group of padawans. Their faces, turning from amusement and confusement to total horror as they met Kylo Ren for the first time. He slaughtered his way through them like slicing vines, they were nothing, they weren't people, they were a means to an end. He reached the final one, huddled and small on the ground, black hair wild as she lifted her face. She stared back at him with Rey's eyes._

 _"Papa," she begged._

_His saber had swung anyway._

Kylo swats at the bowl and it flies into the sink, smashing against the side. Shards of blue ceramic mix in with the thick baby porridge. He braces himself with one hand over the side of the counter, then looks back to meet Luke's eyes, and even as he looked at the man, the images from his nightmare would not bleed from his eyes. "How can you even sit there? How did you not strike me dead the second you saw me?"

Luke folds his hands, and his calm stokes the rage in Kylo. It always had. This man's serenity is something he can never possess, and he had always felt like a failure for it, when he was small. Before he knew the power that could lie in passion.

"Is that what you want me to do? Kill you?"

"I don't know." The answer comes out quick, only because it is true. One part of Kylo does wish for death. Death itself isn't frightening- Kylo is sure he has known it before. Not just secondhand. It was a dead man who had walked around under Kylo Ren's mask and heavy black robes. It is the absence of this life however- the absence of two people who would probably be better off without him- that makes him recoil from the thought. It is selfish, his need to shackle himself to them. Selflessness is another virtue that Kylo has always found out of his grasp. "No."

"What do you want?"

 _This._ Kylo wants to wake up with Rey's hair in his face, watch her brush and tie it into three little loops with practiced ease. He wants to make love to her and find the best parts of himself deep inside of her. He wants to make Ash laugh like he is someone to be adored, looking at him with eyes that have never seen him as anything but a source of love and comfort.

 _But can you be that? Or are you just a monster masquerading as a man?_

Kylo oftens thinks of the bloody handprints he might be leaving on his daughter- unseen, but real, and wet.

Lukes makes a low, murmuring noise, and even though he doesn't say it, Kylo can hear it this time in his hushed silence. _Oh, Ben._ "Why do you always fight against your own self-interest? There are people who love you. Who want to help you."

 _Help._ Kylo would laugh if he could summon the felling right now. People want to _use_ him. Use his power, for their own interests. "I'm not joining the Resistance."

"Why?

"If I join, if they chose not to just imprison or excute me, they will send me to kill Snoke. They might send Rey as well. We will die. I am not willing to die for the Resistance. I am _certainly_ not willing to let Rey die for it." The thought enrages him. He has pictured it many times, because who else will that responsibility ever fall to? No one else is capable. They would leave Ash an orphan if it wins them the war.

"You're going to be taken back to the Resistance base whether you come willingly or not," Luke says, and Kylo feels his heart drop. Of course he will be taken, he is a highly wanted war criminal, does he really think that even Luke Skywalker could just look the other way and allow them to continue their farce of a normal life on this island? Still, Kylo wishes that he had had some kind of warning. If he had known in advance that the previous night was to be their last here, he would have kept Rey in bed a little longer. Grabbed her wrist and whispered, ' _Don't go yet'_ andkissed her into the pillows.

"Whether you actually decide to work with them is up to you, though," Luke continues. He continues to look at Kylo in that annoyingly perceptive way, and Kylo wishes that he would just act normal for once. Fly into a rage, scream at him. His mother would. His mother had emotions like an ocean's tide- it had always begun furious and crashing until it dissipated into soft waters rolling onto a shore. Kylo had once regarded with disdain her inability to truly hold onto her anger.

"Are you afraid that she will not forgive you, or that she will?"

"The things I have done do not deserve to be forgiven. I would never even think to seek it."

"Forgiveness is not an equivalent exchange." Luke stands, and Kylo turns away from him. He knows this soft-hearted man wishes to touch him, and _how can he wish to touch him, how can anyone?_ "Your mother's heart still aches for you. Seeing you like this, with Rey, with your child- I think it would help her heal."

Kylo wants to stay here. He wants to stay wrapped in a world of just the three of them, and let nothing else in, ever.

"And what of you? How do you feel when you think of me?"

"I think I made many mistakes in my training of you. I have had so much time to reflect on it. I do not let myself share the responsibility of your choices, as they were ultimately yours alone, but I believe I failed to protect you as well as I could have. I failed to understand you. I choose to ignore too much of the darkness simmering underneath because of my love for you. I should have known."

"What _love?_ " Kylo wants to feel anger and rage, but instead the only feeling that seems to arise in him is this sick feeling deep in his stomach. He feels physically nauseous and he doesn't know how much longer he can continue to listen to Luke Skywalker's words. He thinks of the love that floods through him every time he looks at his daughter. The love that overpowers him, surprises him, strangles him until he doesn't have a breath in his lungs. No one had ever loved him like that. He remembers childhood. He remembers he remembers the looks of distrust, the whispers, the fighting-

-the hugs, his mother standng in the crack of his bedroom door, his father holding him tight on the front of an old speeder, the smile of Luke Skywalker as he says, " _I've never been more proud of you, Ben."_

The nauseous feeling inside him intensifies. Kylo feels like he has cracked opened a door of a long lost room, and memories attack him, intact, though covered in a fine layer of dust.

"He filled your head with lies. Please, let me show you the truth. Come back with us willingly and we can help you."

"What I did-"

"Cannot be forgotten. But more light shines from you now than I've seen since you were a little boy. You are covering it up with a blanket of darkness. Why? There is no more strength in that for you now. You are just frightened." Kylo is terrified that the man is going to try to embrace him, but he stays a good few feet away. Kylo wonders if man fears him at all. Yes, he is a picture of calm and serenity, but he is also a human, a human who knows what Kylo has done. "If not for yourself, do this for them."

Kylo is struck by an overwhelming _need_ to be with Rey right now. His uncle's light feels almost suffocating, but Rey's is warming and sweet. He feels weak, and like he can hardly stand, and he doesn't want to look this way in front of _Luke Skywalker_ of all people.

 _Why is he your enemy? What is there now?_ Anger that had once felt so justified now just feels like child-like pettiness as Kylo tries to draw on it. Everything once compartmentalized in his mind feels loose and uncaged inside there now. There is that tearing, pulling messily between his ribs, and he can remember the feeling of sitting in Han Solo's lap in the cockpit of the Falcon, and he can remember the feeling of his hand against his cheek.

"Please," Kylo says, holding his child out, his voice ragged. "Please, Uncle, take her."

Luke accepts the child in his arms. Kylo turns, almost stumbles over in his rush to the door. He needs to get to Rey. She makes him feel steady, soothes the voice in his head that screams at him.

She's already there. She is running up the path, her cheeks ruddy, her forehead wrinkled with concern. Rey is there just when he needs her, putting her arms around Kylo and pulling him close before he can even say a word. She stands on her tiptoes and kisses his temple. Her light is the only thing he ever wants, but Kylo knows he cannot keep it in a box for himself.


	12. Chapter 12

Finn is good with babies, somehow, even though he's never held a baby in his life before the moment Rey hands him Ash.

She takes to him immediately, or is just a happy thing no matter whose arms she is dropped into. She has Rey's eyes, he notices, and they are wide and taking him in, a new person. Something she hasn't seen much of. The rest of the child, Finn can't help but see, looks pretty much all the tall, brooding man standing to the side of the room. He's glaring at Finn, but then Rey brushes a hand lightly against his side, and Kylo Ren's gaze immediately revolves to her. Finn can barely look at their soft touches as they speak in low voices. It is so _strange_.

He had known about Rey's brief...whatever it was...with Kylo Ren, though he had never particularly understood it. She had not been willing to offer up much information about what had happened during her captivity, and Finn certainly hadn't wanted to ask. His memories of Kylo Ren, the one he knew from his time in the First Order, are not particularly good. This Kylo Ren, the one with shaggy hair and linen pants, watching the baby Finn holds as if he is about to run out of the door with her- Finn doesn't know what he thinks about this Kylo Ren.

Instead, Finn focuses his attentions on Ash, in his arms. Looking at her, Finn feels a warm feeling not unsimilar from the one he had when had first met her mother. A feeling like... _you are someone I am meant to know_. The feeling directed towards Ash is a lot purer and less complicated than the ones he got from Rey, but it is still the same at its root nonetheless.

Rey flashes Finn a smile as she passes him on her way to the bedroom, and it hits him again how amazing it is that she is actually alive. He had really grieved- it had hit him so hard. Besides Poe, Rey had been his first real friend. And it was always different with her, more intimate. Poe is his buddy, but Rey-

"I would like to take her."

Finn looks up, and there is Kylo Ren, looming over him. He hands over the child without a thought, and she happily goes to her father, babbling with excitement and waving her arms. This is the strangest part, seeing them together. Seeing Kylo Ren be so _tender_. Watching him start to bounce Ash up and down on his hip unconciously.

They don't have very much to say to each other, so they stand in silence. They are two people who probably never would have been brought back into contact with each other, if not for their shared care for one person.

Finn looks over at Kylo out of the side of his eye.

"You love her?"

He doesn't mean to sound so protective. He knows Rey doesn't need it- she has showed Finn that plenty of times. But _he_ needs it.

Kylo glowers under the question. He may be soft and affectionate with Rey or the baby, but something in him hardens in the presence of others. It might be vulnerability, actually. "Yes. What business is it of yours, FN-2187?" It's a purposeful choice, to antagonize.

Finn counters only with a smile and a shake of his head. "Oh, don't act like we're not both traitors, now. Though I doubt they care much about me anymore."

Kylo shifts uncomfortably beside him. He's actually kind of awkward, Finn thinks, without the dark robes and the mask. Not that he doesn't still look dangerous- even without the Force, he looks like he can do anyone some serious damage in hand-to-hand combat- but there is something uncomfortable about his face. Maybe it is being called a traitor- Finn remembers him screaming it at him, absolutely wild, as he chased them through the snow before. He should probably tread lightly in that subject- but he doesn't at all.

"You really should consider fighting with us," Finn says. "Because I think you need to prioritize your enemies. The First Order is going to be out to kill you and your family, and we're fighting the First Order. We're your best bet."

"I don't believe my motives are quite up to par with those of most fighters in the Resistance."

"No one says your motives need to be pure." Finn is insistent. "Everyone is there for different reasons. If you're with us for real ideals or if you're with us just because you want to protect your daughter, it doesn't matter. We still have your power behind us and that's what counts."

Kylo scoffs, and turns to sit down in a chair. "You all must be really desperate." A quiet settles over the two of them for a moment. They can both hear Rey moving around in the next room, and Ash still babbles in her father's lap.

"So I suppose I should apologize for trying to kill you back on Starkiller?"

"Don't bother," Finn says. "I was trying to kill you, too." It is awkward, jesting with the man who had put him in the medbay for an extended period of time, the man he has seen kill plenty of people, including his own father. If Rey can sleep with him, though, Finn figures he can make small talk with Kylo Ren. He trusts her judgement, so if she says he has really changed, Finn is always one for second chances.

No more small talk is necessary, however, because Rey sweeps into the room. She carries a small bag into her hands, and has a wrap slung over her shoulder. "I think this is the last of the stuff we need to bring," she says, rifling through the bag. "I left behind a lot of her clothes; they don't really fit her anymore." She takes Ash from Kylo's arms, and starts strapping the baby to her front.

"You can put in an order for whatever you want when we get back to base," Finn says. "I'm sure that won't be a problem."

Rey looks unsure. "Do you think we could make a stop somewhere on the way back, somewhere discreet?" she asks. "She's still partially breastfed, but she has gotten really used to eating solid foods so we're going to need something she can eat during the trip. I don't think whatever rations you have on board are probably for babies."

"I guess we might be able to," Finn says, not really clear on the answer. "I'll have to contact base and let them know. I really need to let them know we're here and we've got you, anyway."

Rey darts a look over to Kylo, then after a moment turns back to Finn. "Could you...could you not tell them about Kylo just yet? I want to try and explain it myself."

Finn nods. "Of course, of course." Rey smiles, kisses Kylo on the cheek, and exits out of the house. He starts to follow her, so he can go leave that message for General Organa, but then Kylo speaks up from the back of the room.

"You're wrong, you know."

Finn turns around. Kylo is looking at him, not with hatred and anger, but with a lighter, unreadable expression. "Yeah? About what?"

"They still care very much about you. What you represent. Me, they could count on to act irrationally. You- you were supposed to obey. And you didn't. If the First Order doesn't have control of their men, they have nothing."

A small smile takes over Finn's face. "Good."

* * *

Rey has never seen a city like this in her entire life.

It is night time when they land in the hangar, and she can see the lights of Cazem as the descend. It is almost like daytime with the artificial glow of all the buildings lighting up the city center. "I think all the stores we need should be open," Finn says, reading as he scrolls through his datapad. "I don't think the place ever goes to sleep. It's a neutral enough zone, and there should be so many people around that I think we can easily slip into a crowd."

"No one is exactly looking for me," Rey says, tying a belt around her waist. "I'm dead, remember?"

She turns to Kylo, who is sitting with the baby in his lap, barefoot. "Why are you not dressed?"

"I'm staying here with Ash," Kylo says, and Rey feels a brief pang of disappointment. He kisses her goodbye softly as they exit the ship, holding her hand until their fingertips don't touch anymore. It would have been nice, exploring the city with him- they had never really had a chance to do anything like that together, just go out and have fun. _You probably never will_ , a mean little voice inside of her pipes up, but Rey swallows that down like bile. She knows that she would trust Luke to watch Ash, but Kylo certainly doesn't.

Later, when she and Finn are pouring over the map for the trains that will take them into the city center, she realizes that she is glad Kylo stayed with her. For her entire life, Ash had always been in the presence of at least one of her parents, or a room away. Knowing that she is with Kylo just makes her feel less nervous.

Rey can't stop thinking about her daughter, not completely, but she tries her best to let go of her worries for a least a little while. It isn't difficult, with all of the new things to see. They go to a food store first, and Rey tries to decipher which baby foods look familiar enough for her to feel comfortable feeding Ash. They load down a bag with enough that they regret it later when they realize that should have been their last stop, as they are now stuck lugging aroung a sack full of transparisteel jars clanking together. They take turns passing it off on the other when the other isn't paying attention.

"So you're in love with him?"

They're walking down a crowded street, and it's hard to nagivate down without smacking passersby with her purchases. Music and warmth and sounds and lights and smells seem to come from every building they pass, and more people spill out of every one. Rey is trying to balance the bags hanging from both arms while also trying to take a bite of stick meat when Finn asks her this. She almosts stabs the top of her mouth with the wooden spear, then chokes on a cough to the point where Finn is awkwardly patting her on the back. Rey shooes hand away, with a smile on her face. "I'm fine, I'm fine!" She takes her bite before answer, savoring the spices of the smoked meat before swallowing, and nodding. "I am. I am, and don't ask me to explain it! Because I don't know if I can."

"I was definitely going to ask you to explain it," Finn says, stopping to examine a booth that seems to sell different flavors of sweet foam. He orders a cup of deep purple, and Rey shakes her head when he offers her a spoonful.

She realizes that she is soon going to have to explain to a lot of people how her feelings for Kylo Ren became what they are, but as of now Rey can't even seem to come up with the words for her closest friend. Instead she takes another bite of meat, loosely captures Finn's hand with her fingers, and pulls him into a shop.

It's a clothing shop, and Rey holds her breath as she runs her fingers across the delicate material wrapped around the mannequins. Rey had never given much thought to fashion. Her clothing had almost always been purely functional. Since her pregnancy, the majority of her clothes had been quite loose and roomy.

She picks out three new outfits. Two of them are are the different shades of cream, beige and brown that she feels comfortable with, but sturdy, nice fabrics that are comfortable and more form-fitting than the things she has been wearing. Rey lingers a long time over the third, though. It's completely inpractical, but she walks past it at least five times before finally giving in and trying it on. It's a dress, the matte fabric of most of it a brilliant, stormy blue, with a high neck and no sleeves and a small slit going up from where it ends slightly under her knees. Across the front are sewn two diagonal patches of more iridescent material, one a powdery blue and another a deeper indigo.

She gets it.

They are browsing through some baby clothes when Rey disappears for a minute to find the fresher. On her way back, she takes a wrong turns and finds herself surrounded straps and ribbons and lace.

She knows they are undergarments, but they are a thousand times more complicated than the simple breast bindings she usually wears, and they come in a jaw-dropping array of colors. She reaches out to feel the silk of a pair of turquoise colored panties between her fingers, but drops them when she feels the presence of someone right behind her.

"May I help you?"

Rey spins around to find herself no more than a few inches away from the tall Cazemi sales clerk, slender and at least seven feet tall with neatly coiffed black hair, looking down on her with a customer service smile.

"Oh," Rey says, folding her hands in front of her as if she had been doing something wrong. "I was just- you know, just looking."

The sales clerk steps around her, picking up the pair Rey had just been holding. "These were just shipped in from Coruscant two days. That is hand-knit lace running up the side. Fabulously luxurious. You almost feel like you're wearing nothing." Her teeth seem to go all the way up the side of her face as she grins, and Rey blushes.

"I don't see myself having in use for...for stuff like that. I was just looking around."

"You don't have anyone special you'd like to wear these for?"

Rey thinks of Kylo, thinks of his reaction if she pulled off her top and pants to reveal little fastenings of ribbon going up her sides, sheer black fabric pulled against the flat of her stomach. Thinks of him unlacing every tie with his large hands, and looking down at her appreciatively with those dark, lust-rimmed eyes. She thinks of his hot lips mouthing against the silk of those panties, slipping his fingers up under the sides.

She hides them in the bottom of her bag after she pays for them, not because she is ashamed or anything, but because it feels private and she doesn't want any weird looks from Finn.

It has been a few hours when they finally make it back to the train station. They've been walking around for a few hours and almost fall down into their seats when they finally reach them. The whir of the engine and the whizzing of lights as the train shoots past everything lulls Rey into a hazy sort of trance. She falls asleep on the way back, head on Finn's shoulder and shopping bags squeezed between her calves.

He shakes her when they reach their stop, and they gather up their things to walk back to the ship.

Her calves and thighs ache, Rey realizes as they begin the last leg of their trek. Three hours walking around a city and they burn like she had been running laps instead of peeking into shops and examining jars of pureed vegetables. _I really let myself get weak on the island,_ she thinks with a yawn. _This is pathetic_.

When they finally come in eyesight of the ship, Finn is recounting a street performer they had seen, doing a mimickry of his strange moves, and Rey is laughing. It's far funnier than it would be if she wasn't ridiculously tired. She looks to the ship, and before she can breath out a _finally_ , she sees Kylo standing out front, looking straight at them. He is pale, and his eyes when they fall onto her make Rey's heart begin to race. _It's Ash, it's Ash, something has happened to her-_

She drops her bags and runs to him; she can hear the jars of baby food rolling across the permacrete.

"Ash is fine," Kylo says, as if reading her mind. Maybe he is. Still, his voice is shaky, and there is some news he does not want to give, even if he had been waiting out for the express purpose of doing so as soon as they arrived. He pulls an arm around her, kissing her forehead.

"What is it, then?"

Finn comes up behind them, having gathered up the things Rey had let fall. "What's going on?"

"The Resistance contacted us about an hour ago," Kylo says. "It was a really short message, pretty panicked, but the gist of it was basically...do not come back. There has been an attack. On D'Qar." He pauses, putting a hand against his forehead. Rey reaches out and takes the hand, squeezes and looks into his eyes. Kylo is cautious as he meets her gaze. "The base there...it is pretty much gone."


	13. Chapter 13

No one sleeps, especially not Ash.

She's teething, and the sound of her wailing seems amplified throughout the entire ship. If anyone had been trying to sleep, it would have been impossible- but everyone is awake anyway. Finn has been trying to contact the Resistance for the few hours, but Rey finally takes over for him when he finally stalks out of the room, declaring to, 'just need a minute'. Rey continues his work of trying to contact all the known comm numbers they have, none of them picking up. She does this while trying to cradle a screaming baby with one arm.

Her hair is down and tangled.

There are circles under her eyes.

Kylo feels a pang of guilt looking at her that he doesn't want to analyze too much. He is not completely sure of Luke's proficiency for reading minds, but it still unnerves him the way his uncle looks at him. He doesn't want _anyone_ to realize the way he is feeling right now, so instead he puts a hand on Rey's shoulder and a kiss on the top of her head.

"Give her to me for now," he says. "You just concentrate on this."

Rey is hesitant to give Ash up, even to Kylo. She's always extra protective of the child when she doesn't feel well, but Rey hands Ash over to him after a moment. Kylo leaves Rey sitting in the chair, futilely dialing the numbers again and again.

As he walks the baby around the ship, hoping the motion will calm her, he thinks of all the death that probably occurred during the attack, and Kylo feels- nothing. No, that isn't true. He feels relief. Relief that there is now the slightest bit more time between now and judgement day. Obviously they don't know how large-scale the destruction is, but hopefully there will be more pressing issues in the days to come than to put him through a trial right away. He doesn't want Rey to see this, and he doesn't know how much longer he can feign concern.

Kylo knows his mother is alive. He would be able to feel it if she wasn't, he's sure. And all of the other people who likely died? Who were they to him? What was he _supposed_ to feel?

 _These people were your enemy until not very long ago,_ Kylo tells himself. _You would have thought nothing of slicing them apart, of crushing them by their throats. You would have probably overseen this very attack._

Rey is distraught, though. Rey is distraught and Kylo wishes he was the right kind of person to support her right now.

 _You're a monster._

Finn is sitting at a small table in the galley, nursing a cup of caf. He is already staring at the doorway when Kylo enters, probably having heard Ash's screams grow closer and closer. "I suppose we still haven't heard anything?"

"Nothing," Kylo says, pouring himself some caf, though he only takes one sip before pouring it into the sink. It tastes _terrible._ It's burnt, bitter. The caf is terrible, Rey is miserable, the baby will not stop crying and Kylo is on a slow cruise to his inevitable fate.

"You really don't know how to make this, do you?" he asks, pouring out the rest and reaching for the grounds to start over.

"I can't really taste a difference," Finn says. "Don't have the most refined palate, you know. All those years of rations." His voice, while sarcastic, isn't exactly as bitter as one would expect it to be. Kylo glances over at him only slightly, then focuses back on the task at hand. _He seems to have settled nicely in his new life_ , Kylo thought, jealousy flooding his mind. How nice it must be to be able to shed your old life cleanly like a molting skin. To reveal something new, clean and unscarred beneath. Kylo did not think the was an undefiled layer in himself, anywhere to the bone.

"Do you want me to hold her while you do that?"

Finn is standing next to him now, arms outstretched. Kylo hesitates, then slowly transfers the child into the other man's arms. Ash is still wimpering, and she presses her face into Finn's shoulder immediately, seeking comfort and closeness. It's odd, seeing her in someone else's arms, and a weird tightening comes over Kylo's chest as he looks at them. He turns back to the caf. He measures out the dark roasted ground beans. The rich smell wafts past him for just a moment and he remembers.

 _"I want to push it down now."_

 _"You have to wait for it to brew, buddy. If your mom walks into the Senate without her caf, it might be the start of an inter-galactic war."_

 _"But when it's ready, you'll let me push it, right? And I can bring it to her?"_

 _"You got it, Benny."_

"Kylo Ren, teaching me how to make a proper cup of caf. Who would have thought?"

It is strange. Kylo finds that he doesn't mind Finn as much as he thought he would. He had been ridiculously simple to read; Kylo barely had to push into his mind to find the thoughts and feelings bubblings right beneath. Kriff, he doesn't even have to push into his mind. It is right there, written all over his face, whenever he is in the presence of Rey. Kylo supposes he should be jealous, but he isn't. There is no ill intent behind the thoughts- no plans to undermine him, just purity of feeling. That, Kylo finds he cannot fault Finn for.

He slowly begins to put pressure on the plunger, letting the fresh caf rise up while the grounds are pushed down.

"So how do you li-" Stupid question. Rephrase it and start again. "How it...life? Outside." Still pretty stupid. Kylo had once thought himself to have a particularly firm grasp on words, despite not being a particularly conversational person, but now his tongue feels thick and heavy.

"Like I broke out of prison?" Finn shifts the baby to one side so that he can pick up his mug and hold it out for a Kylo to pour some of the new caf in. "I guess I did. I hope you won't take offense in my saying I find it to be a significant improvement in quality of life."

"I'm not surprised," Kylo says. He has never been a stormtrooper, so he does not have anything to commiserate with for Finn's particular situation. "I think I just mean...how did you get used to it? It must have been such a change." The lives they led in the Order had been very different, but Kylo finds himself longing for some type of connection- some type of reassurance that if Finn can do it, maybe he can, too.

"Funnily enough, it feels like the easiest thing I've ever done, after taking that first step," Finn says. "I never felt like I fit in, as a 'trooper. I was good at it, sure, but I never felt acceptance. Not like I do here."

"Well, that's more than I can hope for," Kylo says, and the acrid taste from the caf before is still in the back of his mouth.

"Well, you have the acceptance of two people at least," Finn says, gesturing down to Ash, who has calmed down. She now lay her head against Finn's shoulder, gumming on a small fist, wide-eyed stare locked on Kylo. For a moment, he longs for the closeness and warmth of all of them in bed together in the little house, slightly too warm beneath the covers, but too comfortable and happy to move. Finn gives the smallest upturn of lips, holding up his cup. "This _is_ much better."

There are footsteps, and both men turn to the sound. Rey. Kylo feels his heart sink a little when he sees her.

He had thought, maybe, they would have more time.

 _Bastard._

The smile she wears is fractured and nervous. "I got through to someone. She said she would connect me to the General in just a moment. I said I needed to go fetch the others." Rey does not need to say that she did not elaborate as to exactly who the others are. She walks to Finn, and Kylo brushes her arm as she goes by. "Can I- I mean, I'll want her to see Ash."

Finn is still for a moment, and then he is nodding and handing over the baby. "Of course, of course." He looks between Rey and Kylo, then dips his head a bit before heading towards the door.

"Give us about ten minutes first," Kylo says. He is not planning on a long converstion when finally faced with his mother again, but he definitely does not want an audience. Finn nods again before disappearing out into the hall, and Kylo turns back to Rey. "Is my uncle still in there?"

She shakes her head. "No, it was just me when we finally connected. I didn't want to get him yet," Rey says, speaking under her breath even though there is no one else to hear her speak. "I didn't- I wanted to know what you wanted to do. I don't know the proper way to do this. I thought you might need privacy. Do you want me to even go with you?"

His eyes connect with hers. "I _need_ you with me."

Ash is fussy again. Rey holds her close and smoothes down her wild hair and kisses the crown of her head, but this only seems to spur her on louder.

"She was giving Finn no trouble at all," Kylo says, under his breath.

"That's because we're no one to impress," Rey says, and she gives him the kind of easy smile that Kylo feels is only possible from her, and his heart feels almost filled up to the top. It is almost enough to forget, sometimes. The feelings her smiles give him are the truest, but they are also a lie. Lies about who he is.

 _We are both about to be reminded,_ he thinks.

* * *

Kylo looks, and there is his mother in the holo.

She cannot see him; he is out of view. He examines her, though, takes this brief moment where he can take stock her without facing whatever it is tht he is about to face yet. This is not the first time he has seen her since physically seeing her in person, of course- he has seen images of Senator Organa, and later, the General of the Resistance, more times than he can count over the years. But this image- this image is of neither. This image is of _his mother_ , the one that most didn't see. When she would come home, sometimes far past Ben's bedtime, but he would be sitting on the second to last stair, likely with his head against the wall, half asleep. Waiting for her. And she would pick him up in her arms, easy, because he had been such a small child before he grew too big for his body. She would pick him up and lay him on her own bed while she took down her hair, and Ben would watch, half dreaming and half awake. Happy for this moment that she was close, and the voice seemed to retread into the backs of his mind...

"General?" Rey says, still so formal, as she steps in view of the holo. His mother sees Rey, sees the baby, and she smiles. That is not something Kylo has seen in a very long time. He cannot decide if she looks unchanged, or so much older. He does not want to dwell on it, and he turns his head.

"Rey," he hears his mother say. "Seeing you healthy and safe right now is some beyond needed positivity. And-"

"Ash," Rey says. "Her name is Ash. She's teething, that why she is all upset."

"As if babies need a reason," Leia says, and her voice is tender. "She looks- she's beautiful, Rey."

He had cried constantly as a baby, Kylo remembers his mother telling him once. He had probably been maybe twelve, and he had taken it as an insult at the time, thought that she was complaining about him, listing the ways he had taken up her time and caused her trouble. The ways he had disappointed her as a son. That was how the memory had always been framed in his mind. Until now, however, he had not even remembered the way she had taken his hand after she said it. _"Sometimes I miss those times, when you kept me up all night,"_ his mother had said. _"At least then you always let me know what you were feeling, Ben."_

He had shaken her hand away.

When he looks back at her again, Kylo realizes that his mother has been hurt. She is sitting up in a bed, speaking to Rey- his mother has never in her life just sat in a bed for no reason. Something strange clenches in him at this realization, something protective that Kylo knows he has no right to feel.

"There is actually something I wanted to tell you," Rey said, concentrating on the child in her hands instead of the holo before her. Kylo watches Rey. Watches how she smiles and then replaces it with a worried frown and then smiles again. She doesn't even know how to breach the subject, and then Kylo feels like a coward. He is a coward, hiding on the sidelines from her mother while he lets Rey be brave for him. Since when had he been so frightened of facing things head on?

Not things. Her.

 _Are you afraid that she will not forgive you, or that she will?_

He is not seeking forgiveness. He had told that to Luke, and it is true. It seems such a ludicrous and selfish thing to want, and he had promised Rey that he would try, that he would try to temper his naturally selfish and cold nature. And it is selfish to stand aside.

"She is trying to tell you that I am here, too," he says, and he takes a breath, and he steps forward.


	14. Chapter 14

General Organa- Leia- Kylo's mother- she doesn't say anything for a few solid moments. Her mouth opens and closes once, then she turned to her side and messes with some on the table beside her bed. Rey hears a door swish close somewhere offscreen, and only then does Leia turn back to face her son.

"Ben."

Kylo flinches, just for a moment. Rey sees pain ripple through his expression, and she doesn't know if it is from hearing that name, hearing her voice, or for meeting his mother's eyes for the first time since he was a child. She concentrates on him, the clenching of his fists at his side, the barely contained panic bubbling right beneath his surface. _I'm here for you_ , she thinks, trying to send some comfort his way. _You're not alone. I love you._

He relaxes, slightly. His hands unclench and his eyes close for a brief moment before they open again, his face set with a renewed confidence.

"Hello, mother."

Leia's face, which Rey had imagined more than once in this exact situation, is unexpectedly blank. There is no trace of fear, or joy, or anger, or relief. She looks at Kylo like she is looking through him, as if he isn't there, shaking, hard face set in that intense, determined expression he takes shelter behind so often. Rey is not sure if this is better or worse for him, this non-reaction, this emptiness in the place of too much.

Her eyes close, and her hand goes to rub between her eyes. "I had things to say," she says finally. "I had things to say for this moment, but so much has happened in the past two days. I'm used to taking on a lot, but this all is a little overwhelming, even for me." Her eyes open, and this time she looks at Kylo like he is all she can see, a single, blinding light far off in the sky. "You're there. You're there with Rey, and Luke, and Finn."

"I am." He looks over at Rey with desperate eyes, longing and warm. With understanding, she steps closer. She passes daughter to father, who visibily relaxes with the child in his arms. He holds the baby tight, like an anchor.

"I understand now. More than I ever have. My mind, before it was- it was a mess. It still is, most of the time." He closes his own eyes. Ash, unaware of her father's distress, has her hands on her favorite face, tugging at his black hair with small hands. "I am sorry it took me to this point to receive some clarity of mind. I'm sorry this didn't happen before- that-"

"We can't talk about that right now," Leia says. She speaks slowly, as if in pain, but Rey cannot tell if it is emotional or physical. "Not like this, Ben. We're too far away from each other and I am on... too many drugs to have this discussion."

"Okay."

"I am going to come to you. Not now, because I am...I sustained some injuries during the attack, and I am currently incapacitated. But I am going to give you coordinates, and I need you to go there, and I need you to just stay there."

"Okay."

"Where are you going to be based now, General?" Rey asks. She wonders if she should ask exactly what kind of injuries she had sustained, but did not want to be prying.

"We are relocating to a smaller base on Melzine," Leia says. "But you are not going there. A child has no place on base, especially at a time like this. Imagine if you had been here for the attack. Anything could have happened. I want you safe." Her eyes flicker over to Kylo. "All of you."

Rey had been so busy worrying, she had not even considered the possibility of what could have happened to them all if they had been on D'Qar at the time of the attack. If Luke and Finn had arrived a week earlier, they might have been in the midst of fire and bloodshed with Ash. Rey has only really feared for the life of her daughter one time- that night with Kylo in her room, the night they left.

Leia seems to busy herself with forming a plan on the spot; Rey and Kylo do little more than stand and pay attention. She taps away at a datapad, talking consistently and casting only furtive glances at them every once in a while. Rey catches these; Kylo does not, as even though he looks forward, she can tell that his gaze is directed anywhere but at his mother. There is something similar in their avoidance, though their techniques may be different.

Luke and Finn join them in time. "I would actually like to speak to my brother privately," Leia says. "Just for a moment." There is something tense in her voice, something hidden, but Rey does not want to question her. It isn't her place.

"Of course," Kylo says, and Rey can tell that he is eager to take this chance to leave. He begins to turn, but Leia's voice, softer still, calls out to him again.

"Ben," she says, and he doesn't turn, though he does stop. "To see you like this...it is more than I have dared to hope for in some time."

After a beat, Kylo nods, then exits the room.

* * *

"You're a pretty picky eater," Rey says, grinning over her sandwich. Kylo sits across from her, politely turning away and depositing his bite into a napkin.

"I am not," Kylo says, making another face before washing the last bits down with some water. "I ate the food you made. And I ate First Order rations. That meat just tastes weird. Are you sure it hasn't turned?"

"Tastes fine to me!"

"You would eat anything,"

"You ate rations?" Finn asks, still eating his sandwich, but with smaller, less enthusiastic bites than Rey. "I always assumed there was some special dining area with real food for the top brass."

"There is," Kylo says. "I just never ate it. I believed in more...discipline. When it came to my diet." He picks at the bread, avoiding the interior of the sandwich. "Where is my discipline now?"

"I don't mind if you left it behind, as long as you left some of your scarier personal habits along with it."

Rey stares between the two guys sitting across from her, and attempts to hide the smile she can't help behind her food. It is nice, seeing them together. Actually holding a conversation. Finn lightly teasing Kylo, and Kylo doing nothing but rolling his eyes. It is not anything she had ever imagined possible, but somehow they seem to click easily.

Well, comparatively easy, when she compares it to what could have been.

Kylo notices her smile first, and Finn follows his gaze.

Finn is smiling at her smile, grin growing by the second, when suddenly the expression drops and he hits his own forehead. "Rey! I forgot, I can't believe it." He is shaking his head and scrambling out of his chair. Rey gets up and follows him, Kylo rising after.

"What?"

"There is something we brought- I can't believe I forgot, Rey. A lot has just gone on." Finn heads for a bag sitting in the corner of the room, and digs through it until he pulls out something silver and cylindrical. Her heart speeds up, happiness flooding through her as she reaches out and takes it.

"Talking about things left behind," Finn says. "I thought you might want this."

She powers it on. Finn takes a step back. "Watch it there!" he says, but his voice is playful. She turns as she swipes it through the air once, softly.

Rey looks up and down the saber with glee, glancing across the light to see Kylo's face beyond it. Smiling. More than a smile- he is radiating with something like pride. She recalled the last time she had looked at him through this haze of blue, his expression wildly different, rage and sadness and fear. Desperation. Now he crosses over to her, sweeps an arm around her waist. Rey turns off the saber, hooks it to her belt, where it belongs.

"It makes me very happy to see you with that," Kylo says, close to her, foreheads barely touching. "I'm happy it chose you. It belongs in the family." He kisses her, soft, first on the top of her nose, then her lips.

 _Family._

The concept is so foreign to Rey that she has never particularly thought of them that way, but they are, after all, a mother, a father and a child. That is a sort of family under almost anyone's definition. She pulls away from Kylo and wraps her arms around Finn, pressing her face into his shoulder.

"Thank you so much for remembering this," she says. "Thank you for everything."

She stands back and is beaming, unable to control her happiness at how good it feels to have her lightaber back at her side. It does feel like hers now, more than it ever did. Finn's look is blank for just a moment, then resets into a standard smile. "Of course," he says. "Anything for you."

* * *

When Rey wakes up the next morning, Ash is not there. Rey sits straight up in bed, momentarily panicked, until a strong hand sets on her forearm and pulls her back down.

"My uncle has her," Kylo mumbles, enveloping a large arm completely around her to pull Rey against his bare chest. "Said he would feed her. I hope he likes having a beard full of mushed Tansa root."

Rey sighs, cuddling happily into Kylo's side. She cannot remember the last time she had woken up without a hungry, wet, crying or just gleefully babbling baby beside her. Never with Kylo, she realizes.

"We should be taking advantage of this."

"I thought that was what we were doing." Kylo's eyes are already closed again.

Rey rolls, and she hooks a leg over his hip, straddling him. "You know that's not what I mean." She leans down, brushing messy bedhair from his face, and kisses him. Kylo rests his hands on her waist as she does, kissing back only slightly, and uses his grip on her to pull Rey back gently as she tries to deepen the kiss.

"I love you," he says, kissing the tip of her nose, but sending out the obvious vibe that he wants to progress no further. Rey slumps to the side of him.

"You're upset," she says.

"I'm anxious," he admits, pulling himself up to sit instead of lie. "I think now I am at the point where I am ready to see my mother, but I don't know if I'm ready to assume my place in a cage she creates." He covers his face with large hands and tilts his head back. "I know I'm being difficult. I should be grateful for what I'm getting. I just want our lives to be our own. I don't want you to have to live some half-hidden existence because of me."

Rey feels guilt come off Kylo in waves, a constant presence. She knows that the possibility of his mother's forgiveness strikes conflicting emotions in him, none positive. He is feels at the same time incredibly undeserving and incredibly resentful.

"We don't have to stay, after we meet with your mother," Rey says. "She's right, there is really no place for a child in the middle of a war like this. We need to keep her safe. We could find somewhere to disappear, if that's what you need."

He stares at her. "You don't mean that."

"Don't _tell me_ what I mean." He has an awful habit of doing that sometimes. "I want to do the right thing, but the most important thing is to do the right thing for her. It might be the only way to give her a normal life." She closes her eyes, rolling over to face the wall. "It's just a random thought, not a serious plan."

She feels a touch on her shoulder, lets him turn her body back towards his. "You would leave them? I don't want to feel like I'm being selfish again. I often want to keep you for myself, and I need you to draw the line as what is appropriate and not."

"They are not my family," Rey says. "You are. Ash is."

"What about Finn?"

Rey's expression falters a bit, and she moves in close to Kylo's chest, kisses him just above the collarbone. "I don't know," she says. "I...that would be more difficult." Rey tries to imagine leaving him, saying goodbye for a long time. For forever. Last time, their separation had not been her choice. Choosing to leave Finn behind- the idea pushed a soft pain into the side of her heart. "Maybe he would come with us."

"I'm sure he would," Kylo says. He pauses for a moment, as if mulling something over. "You need to be careful with him, Rey."

"Careful?"

"That you don't- he is in love with you. It is obvious."

He says the words so plainly, as if they are something she should know, something that anyone would know. Rey, however, had not known this. She sits up, pulling away Kylo slightly. The soft pain in her heart seems to ache more, a sickness she doesn't want to address. "He is not," she says, and it is only as she says it that she realizes how unconvincing the words are.

"He is. It's almost cruel to ignore."

"I'm not being cruel," she says swiftly, touched with anger. "I care about Finn very much. You're the one being cruel right now." She knows that she sounds defensive.

There is a pause. "I'm not attempting to be cruel," Kylo says. He curls a hand around her waist and pulls at her slightly- Rey relents, allowing him to bring her up against his body. "I like him. I do. I'm not jealous; I just don't want him to be hurt. I know how much he means to you. I-" His sentence cuts off, left abandoned.

They lay in silence for a minute, Kylo combing through her hair, Rey relaxing into the sensations. He's in thought, she knows, but doesn't want to disturb the cozy peace. Waiting is easier than dragging something out of him.

"Have you ever thought of him that way?" Kylo asks finally, separating her hair into three sections before attempting to braid them. He plaits her hair slowly, laying soft kisses down on her neck every moment or so. Rey leans back into the warm touch of his lips, blissfully comfortable, loving nothing more than the feel of his arm body against her bare back.

"That way?" Rey feels her cheeks warm slightly. "No, Finn's my best friend." The answer comes too quickly. She feels as if she is being dishonest, a twisting inside of her that she has tried desperately to overlook. She _loves Finn_ , though the distinction of what kind of love has fluctuated. There was a time, when they had first met...and there is, of course, the other thing. It hardly counts, though she had thought back to it, once or twice, when touching herself at night. She supposes it possibly counts, if Kylo wants her to be truly open. "It's not like- well, I mean...there was one dream."

"A dream?"

Rey turns to face him, her unfastened plait swinging to the side and loosening slightly as she does. His face is difficult to read, though it doesn't seem upset or possessive. It is rather blank, just waiting for her to continue. "It was just a dream. It was while I was pregnant. That's totally normal; I read so. Having weird sex dreams while pregnant."

"So it was a sex dream." Now his expression is changing, the edges of his solemn mouth curving up in a deviant way.

"Kylo!" She turns back, smiling but red-faced, and leans into him again. "Yes, it was a sex dream. Haven't you embarrassed me enough already?" She doesn't actually mind, not to the extent she pretends with her words, but this is part of the game, being teased.

"It's just us," he says softly, laying a kiss on her shoulder. "Tell me about it." His voice is low, now, not teasing at all in the way she expected. He strokes one arm down her shoulder, and then Rey feels him move from behind her. He lays her gently against the pillows, and kisses her neck from the front.

Rey opens her mouth to question, but closes it again when Kylo brushes a thumb over her clit through the cloth.

"Well, it wasn't just Finn. It was-" Kylo nipped at the waistband of her underwear, and Rey practically purrs, rolling her hips up toward him. "It was both of you, actually. You were both there." She sucks in a breath after this, because Kylo suspends his movement, fingers just about to peel the undergarments down her thighs. Maybe it is too much, what she had shared, and Rey gives a nervous glance down to the lower half of her body. She expects to find him looking at her with confusion, or amusement, or, the worst, disgust.

He isn't, though. Not at all.

Kylo is looking up at Rey with _hunger_. She has never never seen his eyes rimmed with such longing and feral intensity.

All because- Rey takes a shuddering breath as he rubs his cheek over the warm fabric covering her.

Kylo mouths her through the cloth, dampening it. He grips her thighs in a desperate way, one that might leave a mark later, and he pushes past the garment to slide two fingers deep inside of her. "And what were we doing to you?" he asks, and it is more of a growl.

Oh. _Oh._ This is new.


End file.
